Wardenclyffe Page 5

  But the burns…how to explain the burns?

  Something bothered me even more, however: the timing of his story. The incident coincided with our Tuesday test of the tower—his spotting the flashes through the fog confirmed it. Had the standing waves we generated in the Earth caused him to hallucinate? Had the wireless power we released caused the burns? After all, the tower stood less than five miles away.

  As I pedaled along the county road I concluded that certain people might be sensitive to the tower’s emanations, and that these people might react in strange ways—hallucinations, for instance.

  It seemed possible—at least not impossible—and I took comfort in the hypothesis.

  Riding back along the road, I spotted the rock Herring had mentioned within the first mile or so. It marked the start of a rutted drive a few hundred yards in length, ending at a tidy house with white-washed walls and a cedar shake roof. As I pedaled up the drive, I was once again aware of the tower looming to my right, larger now that I was closer.

  A man answered my knock and said his wife was not available to any more reporters and asked if I was another one. My fervent denials must have convinced him, for when I asked to see the barn, he said, “There is no barn, but I’ll show you where it was.”

  He led me across the grassy field west of the house. The entire rear acreage, down to the Sound, was planted with waist-high corn.

  “Is Mrs. Williams well?” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?” he said, his tone suddenly testy. “Are you asking if she’s sound of mind?”

  “No-no. Not at all. I—”

  “That’s what others are saying, but I assure you, you will never find a woman with her feet more firmly on the ground than my wife.”

  “Please understand that I’m just saying that the incident, as described in this morning’s paper, must have been very upsetting.”

  I didn’t mention my doubts. A house “flaking off” and disappearing…how was such a thing possible? And then again, how was such a thing as Mr. Herring described possible?

  “Extremely upsetting. We lost our horse. She was very attached to Annabelle.”

  We stopped before a rectangular patch of bare earth.

  “Well, there you have it.”

  “This is it?” I said, staring. “Is there nothing left?”

  He shook his head. “Not a thing. Even the concrete footings are gone.”

  “When…when did this happen?”

  “About midday, I’d say. The barn was whole and fine when I went into the fields in the morning, but when I returned for lunch I found my wife kneeling here on the grass, hysterical. And the barn was gone.”

  “How is that possible?” I said.

  “It’s the tower,” said a female voice behind me.

  I turned to see a haggard-looking woman in a worn, faded housedress.

  “Amelia,” said the man. “I don’t think—”

  “I’m all right, Fred. I can’t sit in that house all day.”

  “The tower?” I said, hoping I might come up with a way to turn her from that thought. “How could it possibly—?”

  “The flashes started around noon—I could see them through the fog as I came out with a bucket of fresh water for Annabelle. That was when the barn started trembling.”

  Trembling?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you ever seen a frightened dog during a thunderstorm?”

  I nodded. Vibrating was perhaps a better word but I didn’t suggest it.

  “Well, that was what the barn started doing—trembling like it was afraid. I was inside it so I rushed out because I thought we might be having an earthquake. I’ve read about them though we’ve never had one in these parts. But the ground outside was still. That didn’t stop the barn from trembling, though. And then it started flaking.”

  “I read that in the paper,” I said. “Could you explain?”

  “It started on the west wall. Just the paint at first, chipping off in little paper-thin squares, like confetti, and fluttering through the air and into the fog. But it didn’t stop with the paint. The wood siding started flaking and flying off and soon the whole west wall was gone. I could see Annabelle in her stall, facing the other way as she drank from her bucket. She didn’t seem the least bit disturbed. I shouted to her to get out of there but she kept on drinking. Even when her hindquarters started flaking away, she didn’t seem to notice. I kept screaming to her but she didn’t seem to hear me.”

  “Her…her hindquarters?”

  I tried to picture it but failed.

  “Yes! Little bits of flesh and little drops of blood streaming away. And when they were gone, you’d expect her to fall, wouldn’t you? I mean, a four-legged animal without its hind legs will fall, won’t it? But she didn’t. She just stood there as the flaking slowly ate her away. And soon she was gone!”

  This last word was propelled by a sob.

  My mouth worked soundlessly. I had no idea what to say. The woman’s grief was genuine—palpable. I finally resorted to platitudes.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Williams. It must have been awful.”

  “Awful?” she said, her voice rising. “It was horrible beyond words. And it didn’t stop with Annabelle. The flaking kept going, eating the side walls and the roof and the hay and the flooring and finally the east wall until nothing was left. I thought our house would be next, but the house was never touched. Just the barn. And that was when I noticed that the flashes from the tower had stopped.”

  My tongue was sand. Could this have actually happened? It seemed insane. The skeptical scientific corner of my mind began asking if these people were barmy. Had there ever been a barn and an Annabelle?

  But Amelia’s genuine terror and grief overrode all that.

  Something had happened here and, if this woman was to be believed, the events had coincided with our last test of the tower.

  Correlation does not equal cause and effect…I kept repeating that.

  “It’s the tower,” she said.

  Her tone had a note of finality, but I hazarded a question. “Are you sure the flashes came from the tower?”

  “Everyone saw the display Monday night. They came from the same place.”

  I sensed an opening here. “I saw that too. Quite impressive. Did you observe any strange occurrences here Monday night or the next morning?”

  “Well, no,” she said, her conviction wavering just a bit.

  “I saw a lot of flashes in the fog on Tuesday, as well. Did anything around here flake off then?”

  “Hey, whose side are you on?” her husband said.

  “I’m simply collecting data,” I said. “I just spoke to a grounds man in Sound Beach who received mysterious burns on Tuesday.”

  Mr. Williams nodded. “Yeah, I read about that. Have you come up with anything?”

  “Too soon to say. I’m looking for a consistent pattern and so far I haven’t found one. But I’ll make the results public as soon as I have something to report.”

  With that half-truth hanging in the air, I made hasty excuses and left them standing at the site of their vanished barn.

  All the way back to Wardenclyffe I reviewed the facts as I knew them. I had circumstantial evidence that the fish—malodorous, bird-pecked, and fly-blown—had leaped from the Sound a good many hours before I saw them, very possibly during the tower’s hours of activation the night before. Even so, the fish kill and the groundkeeper’s burns were, in and of themselves, relatively minor incidents. But an entire barn disappearing into the fog…that escalated the incidents beyond bizarre into the fantastic—and coincided with the twenty-five percent increase in the power feed to the tower.

  Was there a link? My brain rebelled at the possibility, but my gut said yes.

  What I thought and felt were of little consequence, however. As a mere apprentice I had no authority at Wardenclyffe. All decisions flowed from Tesla. But I’d certainly lay out my findings for him. I was anxious to hear what he
had to say on the matter.

  * * *

  All thoughts of strange phenomena vanished like the morning fog when I returned to Wardenclyffe. A strange freight car sat on the siding. Inside the plant I found a crew of strangers disassembling the generator.

  Our own work crews stood silent, watching. I spotted George Scherff pacing outside Tesla’s closed office door, arms folded across his chest, and ran up to him.

  “What’s this all about?”

  His quick glance my way revealed a world of pain. “They are repossessing the generator.”

  “Who?”

  “The Westinghouse people.”

  “Here now, they can’t do that!” I cried.

  “I am afraid it is too late for that.” He waved a fistful of papers in the air. “Non-payment and breach of contract.”

  “We’ve got to get this sorted! I have some money. I can—”

  “Many missed payments, young Charles. Many, many. You do not have enough.”

  “But without a generator we…we…”

  “Correct. We cannot do anything. All experimentation comes to a halt.”

  Hands on hips, I began walking in circles. How? Why? First the strange data I’d collected this morning, and now this. My head was ready to explode.

  I kicked an empty box. “No generator! He might as well shut down the building!”

  “That might be done for him.” His expression bleak, Scherff pulled some sheets from the sheaf in his hand. “This was delivered this morning.”

  I took it and gave it the quickest of reads. I needed no more.

  “James Warden is suing him?”

  “For non-payment of taxes on the property.”

  “How can this be, George?” My anger needed a target and Scherff was handy. “Aren’t you his accountant? Aren’t you supposed to be paying the bills?”

  He didn’t bother looking at me. “One cannot draw water from a dry well.”

  He had to be as angry and disappointed as I—more so, since he’d been with Tesla so much longer. But he showed nothing. I wished he’d put aside his bloody Teutonic stoicism and shout or stamp his feet or break something. But that wasn’t Scherff’s way.

  “He is a brilliant man,” he added. “Certainly the most brilliant mind of his generation, and perhaps the most brilliant mind in human history. But he has no sense of how to do business. I try to help, but he goes his own way. He should be a billionaire now.”

  “Billionaire?” I said, astonished. “With a ‘B’? How so?”

  “His original deal with Westinghouse in exchange for all his AC patents included a royalty of two-and-a-half dollars per horsepower of electricity sold.”

  “Per horsepower?” My mind was having difficulty grasping this. “Why…by now that must total…”

  “Billions. Just as I said.”

  “But then why…?”

  “Do you know anything of ‘the current war’?”

  “I’m familiar with it.”

  I knew that during the closing decade of the last century, Edison and Westinghouse had battled in the press and in public over which method of delivering electricity to the country—via direct or alternating current—would prevail. Edison’s people went about electrocuting animals small and large—even an elephant at one point—and finally a prisoner on Sing Sing’s death row to demonstrate the “danger” of AC. Ultimately they failed. AC was adopted everywhere because of its inherent superiority and practicality.

  “What you probably don’t know is that it nearly ruined Westinghouse. A Pyrrhic victory in every sense. His AC power was going to light the continent, but he was in danger of losing the company. So in 1896 George Westinghouse came to Tesla and asked him to renegotiate the royalty.”

  “And Tesla…?” My lips refused to form the fatal word.

  Scherff nodded. “Agreed. Yes.”

  I was speechless for a moment. Finally I said…“Why?”

  “Because Westinghouse had always treated him fairly. The maestro values that. He saw a trusted associate in dire straits and knew only one way to respond: He renegotiated a drastically reduced royalty to help the company regain its financial footing.”

  “He didn’t have to make the reduction permanent! He could have made it temporary!”

  Scherff’s smile was deeply bitter. “Ah, you have a head for business, I see. Yes, that is exactly what I would have advised him, but we would not meet until the following year, and by then it was too late.” One of his Germanic shrugs. “Though I doubt he would have listened to me anyway.”

  “But…but…if he had made it temporary he would quite literally be swimming in money now. He would never have to ask anyone to invest in him again. Not a dime!”

  I wasn’t sure what to think of Tesla then. A fool, a naïf, or a sublimely decent human being. I hadn’t known him long enough to tell.

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “In his office.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not well.”

  I stepped behind him and knocked on Tesla’s door. I waited in vain for his customary “Come.” I entered anyway.

  Tesla sat behind his desk, his head bowed and clasped between his palms.

  “Sir, there must be something we can do.”

  He did not speak, did not move.

  “Sir, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  Still he did not speak or look up, but moved one of his hands to wave me off. I was dismissed. I left him and returned to Scherff’s side.

  “You were right,” I said. “He’s not well.”

  I was worried about him. He seemed to be heading for a nervous breakdown.

  “There must be a way to turn this around,” I said.

  “I am open to suggestions.”

  “He’s the world’s most famous inventor. There must be investors out there he can tap for funds.”

  “If this were last year, you would be right. But ever since January, it’s Marconi-Marconi-Marconi.”

  He was referring to President Roosevelt’s transatlantic message from Massachusetts to King Edward in my homeland using Marconi’s apparatus. Word of that spread across the globe like wildfire. A new age of communication was dawning and Marconi was its sun—using Tesla’s patents.

  “But he still has some royalty income from his inventions,” I said. “If we all tighten our belts—”

  “How?”

  “Well, is it necessary for him to live at the Waldorf Astoria?”

  A laugh—genuine laugh from George Scherff. “How will that help when he does not pay his hotel bills anyway? Not once since he moved in has he paid his Waldorf bills! He owes the hotel more than fifteen thousand dollars!”

  The staggering sum left me speechless. He owed Westinghouse, Suffolk County, the Waldorf Astoria—I was afraid to ask who else.

  “It’s just as well we’re losing the generator,” he added.

  “How can you say that?”

  He waved the sheaf again. “Because we have just received notice that our coal supplier is cutting us off for non-payment. But in the matter of royalties, there’s more to the story.”

  His ominous tone made me want to cover my ears, but I needed to know.

  “Go ahead.”

  “His AC patents run out in two years, so even those reduced royalties will stop in 1905.”

  Disaster followed by catastrophe. Could this get any worse?

  Feeling weak, I stepped away and seated myself on an empty crate.

  “Then I guess the dream is over.”

  I’d spurned the job at GE to help a genius change the world, and now here I sat, not two months later, with nothing but dashed hopes to show for my efforts. I felt like fairytale Jack, trading the family cow for a handful of beans I’d been convinced were magical.

  “Do not give up yet,” Scherff said. “The maestro always finds a way. And when he cannot, a way finds him.”

  Not this time, I thought. He’s too deep in debt.

  Feeling lower than I could
ever recall in my life, I slunk up to my quarters and lay down on the cot. Here was when I felt my isolation the most. I longed for a companion, someone to share my heartbreak, offer a shoulder to cry on. But I lay alone, as ever.

  What was I going to do? Unless Tesla could find funding, he had no recourse but to shut down Wardenclyffe and walk away. Which would leave me homeless and jobless. Would GE take me back? I didn’t know. Refusing a job and then changing my mind hardly demonstrated stability.

  I must have drifted off, but the kip left me unrefreshed. I returned to the ground floor and I found it empty—the workers gone, the generator gone, the same for the freight car brought in to cart it away. I didn’t see Scherff, but caught the murmur of voices from Tesla’s office, so I headed there.

  I had just reached his door when the growing sound of a combustion engine echoed from the west side by the siding track. Curious, I made my way to the door, reaching it as the engine shut off.

  Outside I found two men in an open black touring car. I did not know cars so I couldn’t say what make or model. Both wore cloth caps, goggles, and dusters—all of which they set about removing as soon as they stepped out, revealing expensive three-piece suits.

  The driver spotted me and said, “Tell me, young man, is Mister Tesla about?”

  I nodded. “He’s inside.”

  “Would you be so kind as to tell him Mister Rudolph Drexler wishes a word with him?”

  “Do you have an appointment?” I said.

  The driver looked at his passenger, staring mesmerized at the tower looming at the rear of the building. He appeared not to have heard.

  The driver told me, “We have no appointment. We tried to contact his office in the city but no one answered, so we took our chances and drove out here.”

  “I’ll see if he’s available.”

  The driver came forward and extended a small piece of paper. “Please.”

  I took it. A business card:

  Rudolph Drexler

  Actuator

  AFSO

  I had no idea what ASFO stood for or what an “Actuator” might be, but I returned to the office door and stuck my head inside. Tesla still sat behind the desk, but he’d lifted his head from his hands now; Scherff slouched in the only other chair.