The Invention of Everything Else (35 page)

What kind of tunnel is this? A tunnel where someone could walk from the world of words to a place that there are no words for? Louisa is terrified. Faced with the unknown that might be lying there in wait at the end of the tunnel, the government men seem a minor threat. Indeed, she nearly wishes that the government men would hurry up and catch her. She can't bring herself to take one step farther and is just about ready to turn back and surrender. She stops, looks down into the darkness, cranes her neck forward. She drops her head, feeling small and faithless.

The tunnel waits. She attempts one more step.

"Lou?"

She's not making it up. She hears her name called from the dark end. Her breath disappears.

"Yes?" she asks in just a whisper. "Dad," she says. "What?" she asks him and her voice is whisked away down into the darkness. "What?" she repeats a bit louder, though she is unsure which "what" she means.

Louisa presses up against the tile. She hopes to force her heart back
into her rib cage. She shuts her eyes and slides down the wall, crouching on the floor, afraid to go any closer to the turn in the tunnel. She is not ready. She wants to stay in this world. She wants to stay with Arthur. Louisa hides her head in the cavern of her knees, trying to make herself as small as she can. She squeezes her eyes shut so tightly that the darkness there becomes marred with bright streaks of turquoise and fuchsia.

"Lou?"

She hears it again.

"Lou?" And then she sees him coming. Someone is approaching her, calling her name. Mr. Tesla? No. This man is too short to be Mr. Tesla and yet she knows who he is. She stands so as not to choke on her fear. It is Azor. Azor, who died today.

"You're not going to believe this," he tells her, shaking both his hands by his sides.

And he is right. She does not believe it. "Azor," she says. This time she almost does faint.

"Lou. It worked," he says. "It worked, Lou."

"No, it didn't, Azor." She is slowly backing farther and farther away from Azor as he continues to approach. She slides her back against the wall, retreating.

"Yeah, it did. I came here from Monday. After you and your dad left, remember, Arthur stayed to help me? He got the thing working. It worked, Lou. It worked. I just came here from there. You and your dad left only a few hours ago. Remember, you said to me, 'I don't think he's from the future at all. Lonely, maybe, but not because he's from the future.' Remember? That just happened, just a few hours ago."

"What are you doing here?"

"You gave me an idea."

"What?"

"I want Mr. Tesla to come to the future with me. It's where he belongs. Maybe they'll appreciate him there."

"That's a really bad idea, Azor."

"Arthur didn't think so."

She shakes her head. She has to stay focused here. "Azor, something happened today. I have to tell you."

"What? No, don't tell me."

"It's the worst. The worst, Azor."

"Please. Don't, Lou. It could be dangerous to know what happens. It could ruin it. It could change everything, make it so you never would be born or something like that. Understand? It's dangerous."

"Azor—"

"Is it about you and Arthur? I should never have told you. Let me guess. Did he—"

"No. It's about you. It's about you and Dad and what happens today, January 7th, 1943, Azor."

"Shh! Don't! Please don't tell me." Azor holds up his hands and then covers his ears with them. He stops walking toward her, as if she is now the scary one, the one who knows too much. They stare at each other, both drawing breath, both afraid of such unravelings, until the moment is cut in two by the sound of hurried footsteps, a pair of them entering the tunnel, running, looking for Louisa.

"Azor." Louisa says his name one more time. "You die today. You and Dad die today in that time machine." And as she had feared, saying it does make it real. Azor disappears absolutely, entirely, immediately. He is gone. The tunnel is empty and Louisa is alone.

"Azor?" The end of the tunnel, which just moments ago seemed to be some sort of secret, darkened passage leading down to death, now looks like a perfectly regular, well-lit passage for commuters and hotel guests. "Azor!" she yells after him, though her call loses steam halfway through, drowned out by a number of fears. First, she worries that he was right, that she has changed the future by speaking it. Maybe she will leave this tunnel and find that New York City has been completely destroyed by the Germans. She raises her hand up to her mouth before another, much worse thought occurs. Maybe none of this really happened at all. Maybe she is all alone with no time machine, no hope for the future, no Azor, no Arthur, no Tesla, no father.

Two hands, damp, pinching paws, grab her arms and twist her around, away from the tunnel. "Come on." She is shoved all the way back to the stairwell. She is marched up into the Hotel New Yorker, returned to the place where life continues in a very straight and narrow path, a path that leads Louisa and the two government agents back to room 3326.

***

JANUARY 1943
HOTEL NEW YORKER
LOUISA DEWELL—MAID
INTERVIEW

Please state your name for the record.

What are you doing with Mr. Tesla's things?

Miss, state your name for the record.

Louisa Dewell. What are you doing with Mr. Tesla's things? Who are you?

You are friends with Mr. Tesla?

(Subject does not answer.)

You are friends with Mr. Tesla?

(Unintelligible.)

Louder, please.

Yes. I am.

Did Mr. Tesla ever show you anything he was working on?

He showed me many things.

Why don't you tell us what you remember.

What is it that you're looking for?

What were you looking for?

My father.

In our hotel room? You were looking for your father?

Of course not.

What were you looking for?

Mr. Tesla.

Mr. Tesla is your father?

Idiots.

What does your father have to do with Mr. Tesla?

Mr. Tesla invented a death ray that can bring people back to life. I need it for my father.

The death ray doesn't bring people back to life. It kills people.

No, it doesn't.

Yes, it does. I mean it would, possibly, if it actually worked. Mr. Tesla never built one. He hasn't made anything that works in years.

I saw the file. It said, saving human life.

Miss.

I don't believe you.

Why don't you just tell us what you remember?

Electricity itself is immortal.

—Otis T. Carr

W
HAT I REMEMBER.

Lightning, my father once said, strikes the earth one hundred times per second, every second of every day. I don't see how that could possibly be true, and though I would have liked to believe what he said, I couldn't. The bolts of lightning I'd seen in my life had been so few in number, so precious, as to be rare.

I told them nothing. There was nothing to tell. He likes to have eighteen towels delivered to his room each day. He likes inventing things. He loves pigeons.

"Be a good girl" one of the men said when I was finally allowed to leave. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. I turned once to look at them as I was going. I thought of growling but restrained myself. They sat rifling through papers they'd stolen from Mr. Tesla. I thought of the lightning. I thought of how I'd like to watch lightning strike the very target of their balding heads.

The file was still cutting into my bosom. I didn't care what they had said. I didn't believe them. Who are government men to tell the truth? I held on to the file. I had sat very straight during the interview as though I was Bess the landlord's daughter, the landlord's black-eyed daughter with a shotgun tucked just below my rib cage, primed to go off if I exhaled too vigorously. I answered their questions, but there
was very little to tell. Except perhaps they would have liked to have learned that I was smuggling Mr. Tesla's files away from them. I kept my mouth shut, turned right, and, using my key, entered Mr. Tesla's room silently without even knocking.

The bag of birdseed was still poking out of his pocket, spilling a steady dribble of thistle and crushed peanuts out onto the floor. He stood in the center of his room, breathing heavily, staring at the disorder of his destroyed room. He looked quite pale. In his hands he held the beautiful bird I'd seen perched on his sill earlier, gray with white-tipped wings. His bird, I thought. That must be his bird.

"Mr. Tesla," I said quietly.

He glanced up at me with the eyes of an angry animal who'd been caught in a trap, betrayed by a human he might have mistakenly trusted for one short moment of poor judgment. He said nothing and then finally, "Louisa" He came to, remembering my name, returning from thoughts that were far away. "Your friend Arthur told me it was an emergency."

I locked the door behind me; I even drew the chain. "Mr. Tesla. I need to ask you something."

"Yes?" he asked.

I took off my apron and stuffed one end of it into the hole, blocking out the men next door before turning back to him. "The death ray." I whispered it.

"Yes," he said.

"The teleforce particle beam." He perked up his slumped shoulders as much as he could, raising his voice. He stretched up to his full height as though a roomful of reporters had suddenly burst in with flashes popping, notebooks at the ready, prepared to take down his every last word concerning this invention.

"Does the death ray kill people?" I asked, already astonished by how naïve I'd been. Of course it does. Of course it does. I knew the answer before he even opened his mouth. What else would a death ray do? Stop death? No one can stop death.

Reporters hadn't come to see him in ages, though he stared at the door as if waiting for their return, as if he was ready for his final press conference. He waited until his shoulders finally fell. The reporters were gone for good. "Yes," he said. "I'm afraid killing is its primary function."

My first thought, oddly, was not for my father but for Katharine.

What would happen to a woman in love with a man who builds a death ray? Where would she be standing tonight in his room?

"Why?" I asked him. "People die so easily already."

He struggled to pull his answer together. "Yes. But if there were a weapon that could, with all certainty, destroy the entire universe, then of course we would see what an absurd proposition our total destruction is. War would be over, forever."

His answer made me understand the reason he loved pigeons so much. It was because he didn't understand people at all.

"Oh," I said very softly, and I felt something shift. Hope left the room, taking my father with it. He didn't even turn around to look at me or say goodbye. He was really gone now. A ball of something impossible and burning grew in my chest. More than grief, it was anger. Not for Mr. Tesla but rather for ideas that keep the heart in exile from the mind. I swallowed hard. "I stole this from them," I told him, jerking my head toward the room next door. I pulled the file from my apron. "It's yours." I didn't want it anymore. It wasn't what I thought it was at all.

He stared at the file as if watching a long-lost friend get off a bus, a friend whose name he had no intention of calling out but rather someone he'd let disappear into the crowd, someone he'd let stay lost. He didn't take the file from my hand. "I don't need that anymore. Besides, there's nothing actually in there. I never write my best ideas down. I keep them all here." Mr. Tesla tapped the side of his head.

"What's all this, then?" I fluffed the papers of the file.

"That's just the clapboard. The nails are in my head," he said and ran his hands across his hair.

I held it out to him for a moment, watching him with his bird, petting her, loving her while my father was gone and there was nothing any of Mr. Tesla's inventions could do about it. I slipped the file back in among his things and, stooping, began to straighten up the mess. It kept me from crying. It kept me from thinking for a few moments. I brushed shards of glass into the wastepaper basket. I pinched a number of tiny springs from the fringe of a rug. I whispered while I cleaned. "I know who did this. We can call the hotel security. I know who it was."

"Yes," he answered. "I didn't think he'd come so soon."

"He?" I asked.

"Yes." Mr. Tesla looked up, and at last there was a clarity in his eyes.

He was still standing in the center of the room, talking to the bird in his hands. "I really thought I'd have more time. I wasn't done yet."

"Mr. Tesla, they've been living next door. It's the same men I told you of earlier." I stood to face him.

He looked confused and with one hand he began to stroke the head of the bird. "A ray that reverses death" he said. "That would be a good idea, Louisa." He was looking at the bird. "Perhaps that is also a part of the device, huh?" he asked her. From where she was perched in his hand I could see her reflection in the small mirror, doubling her number.

"Why don't you go to bed? I can clean the rest of this in the morning," I told him. He looked pale. He looked old.

"No, dear. Not tonight. I won't sleep tonight. She's not feeling well."

"The bird?"

"Yes," he said. "And I've got work I have to finish."

"You can finish tomorrow."

But he shook his head in reply. "I have to do it tonight," he said. Smiling, as though I were being coy, as though I certainly knew what he meant. "Louisa," he said suddenly. "I met your uncle downstairs, on my way out earlier."

I froze.

"A very interesting man. A very interesting idea. Time travel. We talked for quite some time. We discussed a good number of things. Invisibility, antigravity, telepathy, teleportation, my goodness, transmutation even. It's all very interesting and maybe someday it will be true. Your uncle certainly believes so. Indeed, he assured me that he was actually visiting today from last week. He seemed convinced. He said Albert Einstein's theory of relativity proves that time travel is possible. I didn't want to be the one to tell him that, unfortunately, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is dead wrong, but perhaps you could break the news to him."