Wardenclyffe Read online

  Hat in hand, I stepped inside and began to wander about. I thought I detected Drexler’s voice amid the hubbub, more toward the rear of the room. I was headed in that direction when I came upon a large map spread across two joined tables.

  A map of the world, laid out in the standard Mercator projection, but the likes of which I had never seen. The lines of longitude and latitude were gone, replaced by…by what I had no idea. Instead the map was crisscrossed by lines that undulated and curved this way and that, made sharp-angled changes of direction, intersecting repeatedly in some places and avoiding others entirely. It appeared as if a child had been given a black pen and told to scribble lines every which way he pleased.

  One of the places where multiple lines intersected had been circled in red. I leaned closer and felt an unaccountable chill when I saw they intersected along the North Shore of Long Island—right where Wardenclyffe sat.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” said a voice at my shoulder and I confess I jumped, nearly knocking into the man’s Champagne coupe.

  “Very sorry,” I said. “You startled me.”

  “No harm done. A little slosh but no spillage to speak of.” He thrust out a hand. “William Stubbs. San Francisco Lodge.”

  Stubbs sported an enviably thick mustache and looked to be about thirty. He’d mentioned a San Francisco Lodge…I supposed that meant Septimus had buildings like this all over.

  “Charles Atkinson,” I said as we shook.

  “You’re local?”

  “From Britain, actually.”

  “The London Lodge! I catch your accent now.” I offered no denial as he smiled and sipped from the saucerlike bowl of his glass. I gathered from his eyes that this was neither his first nor second serving of bubbly. “You don’t look old enough to be a member.”

  Damn my bloody hairless baby face—again. I decided to lay the Mancunian accent on thick to distract him from my features.

  “Here now, I may be new to all this, but I’m a bloody sight older than I look. Came all the way over from Blighty to meet Mister Drexler.”

  I’d decided to stick to the truth—or a convenient version of it—as best I could.

  “Ah, yes! The man of the hour. I noticed you poring over the nexus map as if you’ve never seen it before.”

  “Well, I haven’t.”

  “No?” Another sip. “I gather your lodge’s loremaster hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “Bloody well hasn’t. What are all these lines? They’ve got no rhyme or reason. They’re positively daft.”

  Stubbs grinned. “It seems that way, doesn’t it. But there’s method in the madness. They’re lines of force called dlap lines.”

  “What force? Electrical force?”

  “We don’t know. Nobody knows. We don’t know exactly who discovered dlap lines or how he traced them—the secret of doing that has been long lost, I’m told—but the pattern of the lines was copied from an ancient compendium in ancient times and passed down through the ages.”

  I bit back a laugh. “How can that be possible? We didn’t discover this bloody continent till the fifteenth century.”

  “No, my friend. When I say ancient, I mean ancient. Before Babylon and Mesopotamia and all that. The First Age. They knew damn near everything in the First Age.” I saw a hint of suspicion spark in his eyes. “You’ve heard of the First Age, haven’t you?”

  Time for a lie. “Of course.” And a diversion: “I see these places here and there around the world where a whole gang of the lines converge. What’s that mean?”

  “Those are weak points in the Veil. Dlap lines point to places where the Veil is thin.”

  “The Veil?” The word popped out before I could stop it.

  Stubbs tensed, suddenly radiating suspicion. “Wait a minute—are you telling me you’ve never heard of the Veil?”

  I forced a sharp little laugh as my brain made a quick correlation. “Oh, you mean the Wall! In Blighty we call it ‘the Wall.’”

  He visibly relaxed. “Oh. Really? I guess that makes sense. It’s sort of like Hadrian’s Wall when you come down to it. Serving the same purpose in a way.”

  Obviously he knew a little about Britain. But I knew more.

  “We love walls—dry walls, mortared walls, bricks, blocks. Walls everywhere in Blighty. Hardly any veils, though.” I laid it on thick, then tapped the Long Island section of the map. “All these nexus points but only one circled in red. Why’s that?”

  “That’s where Drexler found the chew wasps. That’s where they came through.”

  The obvious question leaped to my lips but I bit it back in time as I realized exactly what he was talking about.

  Chew wasps…what a perfect name for those abominations.

  “Blimey!” I said, trying to bulge my eyes as if shocked. “He’s got the buggers caged, I hope.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re safe. They’re dead.”

  He said it with such condescension, as if he wouldn’t be pissing his pants if a live one flew at him. I wanted to hit him.

  “I’d like to see one of these…chew wasps,” I said.

  “Right this way.”

  As he moved away, I paused for another look at the map. I treated it as a circuit diagram—albeit one designed by a madman with no knowledge of electricity—and committed as much as I could to memory. At MIT I’d developed a knack for remembering circuits.

  The busiest intersections—what Stubbs had called “nexus points”—appeared randomly distributed. The one at Wardenclyffe, then the next closest in the belly of New Jersey. Another far down the coast in Florida, another in the British Midlands. As I moved quickly across Europe, memorizing, I was struck by the lack of dlap lines over the mountains of Romania, almost as if something had pushed them away. Nexus point in Hiroshima, Japan. Others in the depths of the Pacific, one near Hawaii…

  “Coming?” Stubbs said.

  With one last look, I dragged myself away and followed as he wove through the crowd. We crossed to the opposite corner where Drexler stood in a dark suit with a rather formal Westminster collar, Champagne coupe in hand, holding court next to his trophies: the remains of the three chew wasps suspended in a tank of pale blue fluid, like bugs trapped in a sapphire.

  His free hand held his broom handled pistol, which he pointed at the most intact specimen. “I spotted that thing flying straight at me and heard someone shout, ‘Duck!’ I shouted back, ‘That’s no duck!’ But I shot it anyway.”

  This brought an appreciative laugh from all those around him. When it tapered off, he brandished his pistol.

  “Good thing I had the Mauser along. Saved my life.” He gestured toward the black-draped photograph of the fallen Septimus member on the table beneath the chew wasp display and adopted a more somber tone. “I just wish I had it ready in time to save poor Rourke.”

  His eyes widened, then narrowed when they met mine. He shoved the pistol into a wooden holster on his belt and stepped toward me.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” He lowered his voice when he reached me. “Verdammt, Charles! You don’t belong here.”

  I pointed to the chew wasps. “Neither do they. You said you were bringing them to the museum.”

  “There’s a perfectly good reason for not doing that.”

  “When did they become your personal trophies?”

  “They’re not. I’ll explain everything when I return to Wardenclyffe. But right now, I’m escorting you out of here. Members only.”

  I didn’t resist or protest. How could I? I was a trespasser.

  “Can we stop by the map on the way out?”

  His face darkened. “The map? You were looking at the map?”

  I had intended to taunt him, mention dlap lines, but his fierce tone warned me not to.

  “I passed it searching for you. It looks fascinating.”

  He looked relieved. “Again: Members only.” As we passed into the vestibule he said, “Where is everybody? Someone should be on duty here.”

  “To
keep out riff-raff like me?”

  He only shook his head. At the door, he said, “Go back to Wardenclyffe, Charles.”

  “I have questions.”

  “Which I will answer when I return.”

  “I want to know why you lied about taking the…” I didn’t want to call them chew wasps…“creatures to the museum. Tesla will too.”

  “I didn’t lie. I decided against it. The museum would want to know where I found them. If I told them, they’d have excavation teams all over Wardenclyffe. We can’t have that.”

  No…we couldn’t.

  “Good bye, Charles.”

  The door closed with a solid thunk.

  I stood atop the stone steps, my head buzzing with what I’d learned—and what I hadn’t. That map…Wardenclyffe circled in red.

  That’s where they came through.

  Came through what? The so-called Veil Stubbs mentioned?

  It’s sort of like Hadrian’s Wall when you come down to it. Serving the same purpose in a way.

  Hadrian’s Wall…bisecting Britain from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, studded with milecastles, often described as the demarcation between barbarism and civilization, to keep the former from invading the latter.

  And this Veil…did it keep out the likes of chew wasps and things that made fish leap from the water to their deaths?

  My mind rebelled. Preposterous. And yet…I’d been chased by a chew wasp…

  I stood there, uncertain of what to do, where I might go other than Wardenclyffe. And then I saw her. The Gypsy woman and her dog, standing at the bottom of the steps. When had she arrived? She hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  “You have questions?” she said in her thick accent. “I have answers.”

  She turned and walked off in the opposite direction I had come. I hurried after her and we ended at an urban oasis called Seward Park. The space was loaded with children. They had things to climb and swing on. Watchful mothers crowded the benches.

  “We talk here, Charles,” she said as she stopped by the iron fence. The dog sat by her feet, keeping watch.

  I hid my shock. “You know my name. It’s only fair I know yours.”

  “I am called the Lady.”

  “That’s not a name.”

  “Is mine. What are your questions?”

  Where to begin?

  “The map…the Wall or the Veil or whatever it is…nexus points…Wardenclyffe…chew wasps…”

  “First thing you must understand is that this is not only realm of existence. Other planes exist. Countless others.”

  Was she barmy? “That’s impossible.”

  She paused and frowned. “How to explain this so you will understand?”

  “I’m not stupid, but I’m not gullible either.”

  “I am well aware of that.” She looked at the dog. The dog blinked. “Ah!” She turned back to me. “You have eaten mille-feuille, yes?”

  “A Napoleon? Of course.”

  “Imagine one layer of crème filling as world you know, and neighboring crème as world very much unlike yours, separated only by puff pastry. Now imagine mille-feuille with endless number of layers, then imagine it curving and twisting in unimaginable ways, impossible ways that leave each layer touching many others.”

  Isaac Newton had hinted at something like this in one of his books, but still my mind balked. I didn’t want her to stop, however.

  “Go on.”

  “In some places puff pastry is thick and in others is thin. Thin places are—”

  “The nexus points,” I said. I was getting the picture. “The puff pastry is what they call the Veil or the Wall.”

  “Excellent. Veil is most common term. Now we arrive at map. First thing you must know is that Septimus map is out of date. It comes from compendium that survived cataclysm that ended the First Age—which I have no time to explain so do not ask. A copy now resides in forgotten shipwreck. But long before it was lost at sea, someone copied map of dlap lines and passed it down the ages through Septimus Order.”

  “But if it’s out of date—”

  “Nexus point near Serb’s tower has not changed. And as you have seen, his experiments are affecting Veil.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “It seems so improbable. Out of all the possible places he could have set up, he chose one of these nexus points.”

  “Oh, was not coincidence. He was, shall we say, guided.”

  “Influenced?” The only one I could think of was George Scherff. “By whom?”

  “Better to ask, ‘By what?’”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Intrusive entities from other layers of cosmic mille-feuille have influenced mankind since earliest days of civilization. Is called the Secret History.”

  I stared at her. I’d never met a truly paranoid person until now.

  And then I remembered the chew wasps…and Rourke’s corpse. They’d been real, hadn’t they? Perhaps I was the paranoid one here.

  “Secret history…” I murmured.

  “Many know what happened, but few know why happened. There is commonly accepted reason in history books. Then there is real reason, hidden reason, and that is Secret History.” She gave me a sad smile. “Do you think you came to Wardenclyffe of your own accord?”

  My gut twisted. I sensed where this was going but had to ask: “What do you mean?”

  “You too were guided.”

  “Me? Ridiculous! But why? I’m nobody. I’m—”

  “You have qualities that can alter game on this particular board.”

  Game?

  “You expect me to believe this is all a game?”

  “Of sorts. One we cannot comprehend. Secret History is shaped by countless intrusions, endless moves and countermoves.”

  Can a mind break? Mine was about to shatter into countless twitching fragments. So I pushed it all aside for later.

  “Let’s stick to the here and now, shall we? You told Tesla he was cracking the Wall.”

  “Same as tearing Veil. I use more concrete term for him. Dlap lines converge at thin or weak points in Veil to shore them up. The Serb’s transmissions, the waves he creates within the Earth, are diverting dlap lines and creating breaches that allow Otherness to seep through.”

  “Otherness?”

  “A name humans have given to one of the entities, a malign entity. You saw result of brief brush with Otherness: one man dead, one wounded.”

  “Drexler saw the result as well, yet he seems to be celebrating.”

  “He did not lie when he said Septimus wishes to change world.”

  Yes. He had seemed sincere.

  “A change that includes chew wasps? Is he insane?”

  The woman nodded. “Yes. Quite. Because he and rest believe creating chaos will facilitate return of the being they await.”

  “Who?”

  “They call him the One, and he is something more than a man. They believe that upon his return world will change, and they will be handed reins of power.”

  “Power over a world full of chew wasps?”

  Her smile was more than a little bitter. “They are blind to that. They see only power, control. Do not know that chew wasps are merely mosquitos of the Otherness. You cannot imagine…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Imagine what?”

  “Better if you do not know. And better they do not know that they wait in vain for the One. He is not coming. He will never come. He is sealed away forever.”

  My brain was going numb. “But—”

  “I have said enough. I tell you all this because I do not want you to abandon Serb.”

  “I would never—”

  “He will be trying—terribly trying—but you must keep in mind that is not his fault. He will be influenced.”

  “By what?”

  “Something came through during your last test. Something came through and stayed.”

  “Like a chew wasp?”

  She shook her head. “Far more dangerous. Your brilliant Serbia
n friend is full of resonances. The straggler from Otherness will disrupt those resonances…disrupt the resonances of everyone within its sphere of influence, causing them to despair, to lose hope, to lose faith in everything and everyone, including themselves, plunging them into darkness. And so is important you stay close to Serb.”

  “What about my resonance? How can I help him if I lose faith in everything?”

  She placed a hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. “You, my child, have no resonance. You are full of dissonance.”

  She didn’t have to explain. Instantly I knew what she meant. A man trapped in a woman’s body. What could be more dissonant than that?

  And then it struck me.

  “You know?”

  “Of course. Born Charlotte with Charles inside. Do not think you can hide these things from your Mother.”

  Mother? Nonplused, I fumbled for a reply.

  “My mum’s dead.”

  “That was birth mother. I am other mother.”

  “You’re not any mother to me.”

  “That is because I am your child.”

  What? What was she saying?

  “I have no child!” I would never have children. “But even if I did, how could you be both?”

  “Because I am, and you must listen to your Mother—you will listen to your Mother. You will return to tower and you will stay as long as Serb stays. Is clear? You must not abandon him to the darkness.”

  I looked away. “I have my own darkness.”

  “I know your darkness,” she said gently. “But is a different darkness. Is coming from within, from your despair. Do not despair. You will not always be alone. But to see that day you must fight the darkness from without that will seek to seep into Serb. He does not understand the power he wields. He has created a hammer and is smashing the Earth with it. Everything you know will change if you are not there to guide him.”

  “Guide him? He’s the maestro!”

  “Then you must find way to rewrite his music.”

  “How? He has the greatest mind of his generation.”

  “Yes, but he does not have your dissonance. Look for answer inside you. Use your dissonance, Charles. There lies your advantage. Use it!”

  With that she turned and began walking away. The dog immediately fell into step beside her.