Wardenclyffe Read online

  “Climb!”

  I had to get back inside to execute my countermove, but the only way to safety now was up.

  As we climbed, something strange occurred—if strange still had meaning here. The fog disappeared. Not as if we’d ascended above a misty layer into clear air. No, the fog disappeared, above and below.

  As did the plant.

  And the Long Island Sound.

  All gone.

  Replaced by a nightmare landscape under a dark, purple-tinted sky where stars glinted in unfamiliar configurations. With no Big Dipper, I couldn’t find Polaris, if it even existed here. A huge, partially fragmented moon hovered just above a horizon that seemed too far away.

  Above us, the cupola still blasted blinding, high-voltage bolts of electricity deep into the night; but below…the ground below us crawled with life—the giant maggot things we’d seen, and huge, dark entities that rippled along the ground on massive pseudopods. Chew wasps flitted about, but other things hovered in the air as well, things that looked like man-o’-war jellyfish, trailing tentacles that wrapped up small creatures scuttling along the ground.

  It struck me then that I was seeing another world, another level of existence, another layer of the infinite Napoleon the Lady had described. And more, I was accepting it instead of denying it. My view of existence, my Weltanshauung, as Drexler might say, had been turned upside down and inside out.

  The simple dualism of the Christianity I’d been raised in lay crushed to dust at my feet. God above, Satan below, and humans between—such a nice orderly universe. The kindly bearded Heavenly Father was there to watch over us, and give us refuge from the Devil below. But now…

  No one was in charge. Which didn’t mean no one was out there. The void wasn’t empty, and the best I could expect was indifference. But I sensed no indifference in the reality Drexler and I were observing at the moment. Here dwelled relentless hungers and countless gnashing teeth.

  And behind all that, if the Lady could be believed—and she hadn’t steered me wrong yet—an endless game in progress, in which we were just another token on an infinite board.

  I was looking at the future…the future for all humanity if I didn’t get back to the plant.

  “This is what Septimus wants?” I whispered, afraid something might hear.

  “No,” Drexler said. “No one wants this. Septimus has eons of tradition, but I see now it is all…all lies. We have been duped. And we have been fools! I should go back and tell them.”

  “Will they listen?”

  “Of course not. A futile gesture. I probably shouldn’t bother. But I must. I have a son. I cannot let Ernst be subjected to this nightmare!”

  “Then help me get back to the plant. I need to try new circuitry. I did some rewiring without anyone knowing.”

  “I thought you seemed unusually busy of late. What will it do?”

  “Make all this go away.”

  Or not.

  “You’ll most likely fail, but we’ll try anyway.” He started down the ladder. “Schnell!”

  “Do you have that gun on you?”

  “Of course.”

  “We may need it.

  Suddenly we were engulfed in fog—a good sign, I hoped. As we continued the descent I began to make out the lights of the plant. The maggot thing had moved on, giving us a clear path to the rear door.

  Drexler landed first, I right after him. As soon as my feet hit the concrete pad I pushed him toward the plant.

  “Run!”

  He started, but slowed. I passed him and looked back to find him staring at the mouth of the shaft.

  “Something’s happening,” he said.

  He was right. The flashes within the shaft had gone dark. Either the coil down there had failed or—

  I shouted, “Get away from there!”

  Without warning the shaft vomited a silent geyser of blackness. It had no shape. It seemed solid and yet it seemed mist.

  The Occupant was loose.

  I grabbed Drexler’s arm. “Come!”

  He shook me off. I couldn’t wait for him. I dashed for the supports, climbed through the lattice, and looked back.

  Apparently the message that he had to get away finally penetrated Drexler. He turned and dashed after me. He was ducking through the latticework when the darkness caught him, encircled him, lifted him. He screamed, not in pain but in abject terror.

  I started back toward him but he was already too high for me to reach. The Occupant was flowing up the tower, slowly but inexorably engulfing each leg and strut as it moved. It had no shape of its own but was assuming the shape of the tower.

  Drexler rose with it but became wedged against a truss some forty feet above the ground. His upper torso was free and he had his pistol out, waving it around.

  “Go!” he shouted. “Go inside! Do it!”

  I ran. I could not reach Drexler, but if my plan succeeded, the Occupant would return to its home, leaving Drexler free.

  Wary of chew wasps or worse, I slipped into the instrumentation room and began throwing my hidden switches. When all was ready, I gripped the lever that would reverse the polarity of the Tesla coils—both the one attached to the pipe where the floor used to be, and the bigger one in the tower’s cupola. I had no idea if it would work. But it had to. This was all we had.

  I slammed the lever home.

  The lights dimmed, the generators whined, and then the whole plant began to shake. The reversed polarity and my own circuitry to create dissonant waves of varying amplitude should have started by now. Once they did—if they did—Tesla’s standing waves would be disrupted. Or not.

  I ran back to the rear door, grabbing the fire ax along the way. I hoped I wouldn’t need a weapon, but just in case…

  The Occupant had engulfed the tower all the way to the cupola but shied away from the flashing bolts. Drexler was still bound beyond reach.

  “Is it working?” he screamed when he saw me.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell yet.” I felt so helpless just standing there watching him.

  He brandished the pistol. “I would shoot the verdammt thing but I don’t know where!”

  True enough. It seemed without mass and yet it had lifted him and trapped him against the struts and trusses.

  At that moment I thought I caught a glimpse of the latticework through the Occupant, but then it was gone. I kept staring and saw it again. This time it remained visible.

  “Something’s happening!” I shouted.

  “What?” Drexler wailed. “Please tell me it is something good!”

  “I think the Occupant is fading…fading away.”

  Drexler began sobbing with relief. “Please make it so!”

  “Yes! It’s most certainly fading!”

  Had my dissonant waves done it? Was the Veil closing and drawing these monstrosities back to the other side?

  I looked up at Drexler and saw to my horror that he too was fading.

  “Direkthilfe?” he cried, his voice full of panic. “Was passiert? Ich kann dich nicht sehen!”

  I saw what was left of him raise the pistol to his head as he disappeared.

  “Ich werde nicht dorthin gehen!”

  I flinched at the sound of the shot, and then I began to sob. For years I’d loathed the man, but…

  Rudolph Drexler had done evil in his life, I was sure, and evils he’d put in motion would keep developing after his death. Once the lust for power took hold, very few got free. He’d been duped, just like the rest of his group, but toward the end he’d wanted to make things right.

  The bolts arcing from atop the tower suddenly dimmed. They still flashed but nowhere near as brightly. I smelled something burning and turned to see smoke billowing out the door behind me.

  I ran inside and found the source: one of the generators had burned out. I saw no open flames but that might change at any moment, what with the coal fire burning within. I was about to run for a hose when the second generator screeched to a halt and began pouring smo
ke into the air.

  I watched for flames within the billows but saw none. Luck was with us. They’d merely burned out when they might have exploded.

  For a while I was the sole occupant of Wardenclyffe.

  And then Tesla returned. He came through the front entrance, waving at the dissipating smoke with the telegram in his hand.

  “What…what has happened here?” he said as he stared at the steaming ruins of the generators. His eyes seemed more alive than they had in weeks.

  Where to begin? So much to tell…the rending of the Veil, the infiltration from the other side, the emergence of the Occupant, Drexler’s death…

  My brain resorted to the most mundane: “The news from Wales? Good?”

  “You mean, did the bulb light?” he said. “Of course it did. Was there ever any doubt?”

  “No, sir. None at all.”

  I hadn’t expected glee, but at least satisfaction. Here was the vindication he’d sought. And yet he looked positively unsettled. I sensed something other than the loss of a pair of generators was disturbing him.

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “A news wire came through as I was waiting. From San Francisco. The city is in ruins and aflame after a major earthquake. Thousands are feared dead.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It happened during our test.” He looked at me with haunted eyes. “I caused that earthquake, Charles.”

  TESLA’S MILLION DOLLAR FOLLY

  There everything seemed left as for a day—chairs, desks, and papers in businesslike array. The great wheels seemed only awaiting Monday life. But the magic word has not been spoken, and the spell still rests on the great plant.

  —Export American Industries

  OCTOBER 12, 1937

  “You must stop blaming yourself for San Francisco,” I said. “There’s no possible way—”

  “I created standing waves in the Earth’s crust,” he said, staring off into space. “The San Andreas fault is notoriously unstable. I pushed it over the edge. The result was three thousand deaths.”

  “As you said: ‘notoriously unstable.’ The quake was inevitable.”

  “But maybe not so severe without me.”

  I sighed. “We avoided far worse. San Francisco lost neighborhoods…we could have lost the whole world.”

  “That is why no one must ever build another tower, or see the original circuits!”

  As we’d stood by the ruins of the generators, I’d explained what had happened to Drexler and the Occupant. I could see the maestro had trouble accepting my story, but Drexler was indeed gone and I had the only explanation.

  Then I confessed to my betrayal—how I’d disrupted his standing waves. Instead of being angry, he’d embraced me and thanked me.

  Tesla decided then and there to shut down Wardenclyffe. We lit a fire in a trash can out back and began burning papers. I went to the instrumentation room and tore out all of Tesla’s wiring. But left my own—the dissonance circuits that would disrupt standing waves. Anyone trying to duplicate Tesla’s technology using those would be bitterly disappointed.

  The next day we used Drexler’s car to drive back to the city. I dropped Tesla off at the Waldorf, then parked Drexler’s car, silver-headed cane and all, behind the Septimus lodge downtown. We agreed never to see each other again.

  I never saw the Lady again. Coincidentally, however, another woman with a dog was responsible for my meeting the woman who would love me unconditionally for who I am, who would become my wife. Life can be wonderfully strange at times.

  Tesla gestured broadly at the city beyond our little park. “You saved the world, Charles.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “No, it is true. I wish I could tell the world about you, but the world cannot know about the Veil and how it can be torn. All that must remain secret.”

  “Let’s hope it will. For a number of years an obscure writer was publishing tales that sounded like he knew about the Veil and what lies beyond it.”

  “How could he know?”

  “A lot of his stories were influenced by dreams. He was just a teen in Providence during the Wardenclyffe years. Perhaps he was sensitive to the breach—Providence wasn’t that far from the tower. Whatever, he was a relative unknown who published only in the pulps and died earlier this year. I can’t see any way his work will be remembered.”

  “I am sorry for him,” Tesla said, “but the world is better off with all that remaining secret.”

  Secret…I remembered the Lady talking about the Secret History, and I guessed Tesla and I had become part of it.

  He shook his head sadly. “On one fateful morning in 1906, you saved the world while I destroyed San Francisco.”

  “How do we know my dissonant waves weren’t the cause?” The question haunted me at times.

  “The standing waves,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “My standing waves…”

  “Enough of this sort of talk,” I said, rising. “Come. I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “No-no-no. We must not. I am being watched.”

  Despite his previous warning, I glanced around but saw no one. “Surely—”

  “Right now this can be written off as a chance meeting in a park,” he said. “But if we are seen supping together, they will make a connection and you will suffer.”

  “‘They’? Who do you mean?”

  “The government. And Drexler’s people. They want my secrets. And I am so afraid they will find where I have them hidden.” He looked up at me with an agony of despair. “That taxi accident. Not an accident. I stepped out in front of it, hoping I would die.”

  “No!”

  This poor man. Had the maestro gone truly mad?

  “Yet still I live.”

  He used his cane to push himself to his feet.

  “You are the only one I trust, Charles. If I call you, will you come?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about but how could I refuse?

  “Of course.”

  He began limping away.

  I started after him. “Here. I’ll walk you back.”

  “No! We’ve been seen enough together. We must never see each other again. Not until I call you.”

  Five years and three months passed before I received that call.

  JANUARY 8, 1943

  The maid was being stubborn.

  “You see?” she said, pointing to the sign hanging on the doorknob. “It says ‘Do Not Disturb.’ So I do not disturb.”

  The call had come yesterday morning.

  “Come to my room,” the voice had said without preamble. I recognized the accent immediately. “You must get here first. Bring a briefcase. Do not stop at the desk. Room three-three-two-seven. Leave now.”

  I’d left as soon as I could but snow along the route had slowed my train, and I didn’t arrive until mid-afternoon today. I thought I might be too late to be “first,” but the sign on the door gave me hope.

  So now I stood on the thirty-third floor of the Hotel New Yorker, arguing with a maid.

  “He’s not answering,” I said, knocking on the door again. “I’m afraid something’s wrong. You must let me in. What if he dies while we’re arguing?”

  That spurred her to action. She picked a key from her ring and opened the door. I rushed into the two-room suite ahead of her. She gave out a small cry when we found Tesla lying fully clothed in repose on his bed. As she rushed out, I touched one of the hands folded on his chest and found it cold. He’d been dead awhile.

  Strangely, I experienced no grief. He’d had eighty-six years, as full of accomplishment as they were frustration; he’d known riches and poverty, world-changing success and crushing failures. A life well lived. Everything except the love of a woman. But that had been his free choice.

  …you must get here first…

  Why?

  I didn’t have to look far. On the nightstand between the bed and the wall lay a stack of papers beneath a white envelope inscribed with Charles.
I shoved them all into the briefcase I’d brought along and hurried out.

  In the lobby I found a seat against a wall, equidistant from the elevators and the front desk, and settled in to watch.

  On my way in from Chicago, I hadn’t known exactly what to expect. I’d guessed I wouldn’t find Tesla alive. But was the call the result of a premonition or premeditation? From the positioning of his body I assumed that he’d died by his own hand. He’d already tried death by taxi. Now, death by…what?

  I opened the envelope. Inside I found a multi-page, handwritten letter and an empty medication packet labeled Digitalis. I recognized it as a heart medication, but knew no more about it than that. I assumed, though, since he’d given it to me, that he wanted me to know he’d chosen the time, place, and means of his passing via a deliberate overdose.

  A middle-aged man carrying a doctor’s black bag entered and was escorted into an elevator. I watched the floor indicator stop at 33. Two men in three-piece suits entered and said “FBI” as they showed identification to the desk man. They too ascended to the thirty-third floor.

  I returned to the letter, a very personal message stating how much he’d enjoyed working with me, and how I should not waste my time in the employ of a municipal utility, but break free and find my true potential.

  I glanced up and almost cried out when I saw Rudolph Drexler stroll into the lobby. Of course it had to be the son he’d mentioned. Ernst. But the resemblance was remarkable—right down to the silver-headed, rhino hide cane. What was a German national doing here in New York during wartime? He sidled to the side and stood watching.

  The two FBI men returned to the lobby and put their heads together. I couldn’t follow their low conversation but “OAP” was mentioned more than once. As a naturalized citizen, I knew the acronym: the Office of Alien Property.

  I could see where this was headed: OAP would seize all of Tesla’s papers wherever they might be, and various government scientists would cull through them for anything of value. I didn’t have to sift through my briefcase to know that right now anything of true value was sitting here on my lap.