7. City of Night – Tuesday Evening, July 30th, 1912
"How is this even possible?" Elizabeth muttered from the porch. Above the sky was a deep blue and darker to the east, but not nearly so much as her countenance. Down the beach and behind the Pavilion, the mysterious workmen had quit for the evening, the late lights of lamps quenched. To the other direction the sun was setting orange, while a steady breeze from the sea ruffled hair and clothes. I could see the moon rising over the eastern sea. Having washed off in the tub after our abortive foray into Long Island Sound, we'd changed back into our day clothes, preparing for the subterfuge to come. "I mean, my finger and now this?"
I took a seat next to her, watching the oncoming sunset and glimmering waters of the Sound along the beach below…hoping to comfort her. "There are a lot of things I don't understand, Elizabeth. I wish I did." My words came softly, for I knew that selfsame pain I held she did too. She put her hand on mine, cocking her head as the wind caught her freshly dried hair. "You all right?"
"Not really. It is hard to have one's dreams demolished, don't you think? Half-heartedly she offered a smile our fingers met. She looked down at her other hand. "And if only it were that. What…what I said earlier about you and Columbia...how they had not given you a choice. I…I was...thinking about Daisy again."
"Fitzroy was going to kill that boy, Elizabeth."
Her brow furrowed, a ghost of a smile upon her face then gone. "I…I try not to think about many things now, but it keeps me awake. I can't…I just can't stop remembering the sci…scissors. How she…she looked at me. You once told me you just learned to live with it. What if I can't?"
"You will." I said, squeezing her hand tight. "You have to, but I promise, I'm going to make it so you never have to do something like that again. There is a difference between killing and murder, Elizabeth."
"I'm not aware of one." She said as the wind teased the fine strays of her hair. She'd turned now, her profile looking distantly across the empty horizon in the oncoming twilight. "The good book says it. Thou shall not kill."
"And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand."
She turned and looked at me with guilty eyes. "Exodus?"
"Yah." I felt the wind on my face like fingertips. "I think God or somebody like that wrote it."
She laughed. "What...what does it mean?"
I shrugged, having plumbed those words so many times in my own darkness. "Something like you don't let people murder other people. You stop them. You protect. I guess God was okay with Moses doing it...why not you?"
She pondered quietly what I'd said, the wind whipping between us as the night came on until again, she spoke. "Do you…do you believe in God, Booker?"
I swallowed, remembering when she'd asked that before…and what I'd seen beyond the doors. "I don't know. I'd like to."
"Do you think…think he forgives us?"
I smiled at her innocence. "I believe he forgives you, Elizabeth. Maybe, sometimes, even me."
She'd been rocking alongside me, waiting impatiently for nightfall. "I...I haven't asked this before. I know you said you...hurt...people. And the Sioux women. Did you ever, ever...kill...anyone else?"
"Aside from half of Columbia?" I questioned, gaze back upon the horizon dark. "But that's not what you mean, is it?" I paused for a moment. "You mean murder...with malice aforethought."
"Yes." She said after kindred pause, her eyes now with mine upon the horizon. That I had to think about it was telling.
I remembered back to the Rocks when red-haired Stuart was coming at me with the axe, then that fat bald guy with coal dust upon his face and the stupid dungarees and no shirt beneath, just all that chest hair. I remembered being outside Manila in San Juan, searching home to home, finding the kids with the ancient Spanish pistols and all the intent in the world to blow my head off. Sometimes I wished they had. "No." I answered. "I don't think I've ever killed someone who didn't have it coming."
"But the killing…"
A long pause ensued. "I'm no Saint."
"Why would God do this to us?"
I sat silently. Closed my eyes.
"When…when should we go?" She asked after that quiet moment.
I glanced back over my shoulder to our bags upon the bed, Anna's box with junk jewelry inside and a little tiny coffin. "Probably now. While we still have a bit of daylight. Snakes, you know."
She stopped and looked at me, quite unconfident. "Snakes?"
"Elizabeth, this is going to be all right."
"You weren't so certain about that earlier. And, snakes…"
I stopped rocking and stood, turning to walk back to the coat rack and my hanging jacket. From inside it I drew my holster and the Broadsider. Taking at it in hand, I felt her eyes upon me. I closed my own and with a sigh hung it back on the rack. "I shouldn't have mentioned it. Let's go."
#
I'd asked Livingstone earlier about the shortest way to the station. Figuring he'd tell me Woodville all the way and walk east, I'd been surprised when he informed me of 'the track.' As we walked along through the dimming light night birds called about us, the crickets humming in the underbrush. Occasionally I felt a bug alight on my neck and swatted it, saw fireflies glowing along the path ahead. Before us a lone tree branch jutted out from walls of wood. "What is this place?" Elizabeth said, stepping over leaf litter in her blue skirted schoolgirl's outfit and boots. Though I occasionally flailed at the airborne nuisance, she seemed completely oblivious to the no-seeums.
"The counter man at the Bungalows told me about it…a path that leads straightaway from the Old Town back there to the Shoreham Depot. I guess it's about a mile, which is a good sight better than taking the way we came in." Again, I smacked at a pest.
"It doesn't seem so good for you." She said with an empathetic grimace.
"They just like my sweat. Ain't nothin' I ain't lived with before." My eyes turned to her. "They don't like you much, though."
She shrugged, and I figured ignorance was bliss. Her eyes did seem preoccupied with the track. "Do you think anyone else is out here?"
"At this time of evening and without light? You'd have to be a fool to come out here." I noted that we did not have a light. Grown anxious, from her bag Elizabeth produced a small box with a lens in front of it and clicked it. Ahead of us a yellow beam illuminated the ground and trees ahead, exposing the path and a fallen scramble of twigs we'd surely have stumbled into. "Where did you get that?" I said.
She looked at me sheepishly. "I...went and bought it down at the Maples earlier today, while you were taking your bath. You took a long time. And that was before you talked about the snakes."
"I wish I'd never mentioned the damned things." I said with a sigh, fretting over how much she'd spent. "Let me see..." I took it from her, looking it over and finding it of reasonable manufacture. "The switch is on the top?" As soon as I took it in hand the light went off. "What the hell?"
"It's an electric torch, Booker." I heard her laugh. "The lady at the Maples called it a 'flashlight'…I guess you can't keep it on very long before you have to turn it out. The batteries aren't very good, I guess."
"What do you mean, 'you guess?" I snarled.
"Watch out."
"What?" Something grasped my legs and feet and I stumbled forward, hitting the ground with a thud. The lamp went tumbling and came on beaming up at the overhanging trees and bugs spiraling over me. "Uhggg."
"Are you all right?!" Elizabeth exclaimed, hand over her mouth.
"Yeah." I said, looking around and brushing off. "Just a little damage to my pride."
"You're luck it wasn't a snake." She giggled and walked to my side, kneeling in the light to offer her hand. Behind me goaded the snag of branches. Elizabeth walked to the lamp with a smirk upon her face, picked it up and turned it off.
"Maybe you could have gotten something a little more efficient."
"It's all they had." She shone it on me, causing me to squint.
"Elizabeth."
"Come on, it's fun." She turned with a grin and flashed the light down the path, then clicked it off. Once more we began to walk. Every so often she'd flash the woods and the way ahead…looking perhaps for more rogue branches or serpents. Once I saw a pair of red eyes gleaming back from the side of the road, and amid the night sounds of the forest heard a rustle. She froze. "Booker, how much further?"
"Maybe a mile." I said, coming to her side. From the little red eyes, she turned and looked at me. "At least that's what the clerk said. It's not like I've exactly been here before."
"That's a long way. How far have we come?"
Still swatting bugs, I sighed. Had leaving my Broadsider been a mistake? "Not far enough. Let's get on with it."
It took us twenty minutes to make the station, the end of our hike heralded by the idling of generators and an indistinct glow ahead that outlined tree branches. In that fairy light loomed the shadow of a wooden trellis overhead. Hanging from the framework was a sign that in the dark we couldn't read. Elizabeth turned, shining her new toy upon the board. "This way to the Shoreham Inn. ¾ of a mile!" At her reading, she seemed eminently pleased with herself. She turned the light off. "You were wrong."
My shin still ached. "Bill me."
Beyond a dirt parking stood the Shoreham Depot, a squat wooden building with a shallow pitched roof, chimney, and five windows on its facing side, set amid a cover of shingles. The roof had pronounced eaves all around its perimeter, supported by the upswept curves of wooden brackets. In a trench to the south ran the tracks of the Long Island Railroad, atop the opposite embankment a seven-foot-high wall of brick. Down to the east a footbridge arched over the right of way, leading to an obviously closed and locked gate. Looming over it were the reverses of buildings, some windows alight from within even at this hour. The source of the golden aura emanated from beyond their multi-storied heights. The generators running not only I could hear, but now smell, the pungent tang of burnt diesel hanging in the air.
By its own darkness we could see the depot closed for the night. In the glow of that city of light Elizabeth crunched across the dirt and mounted the station's steps, up to a low and surrounding boardwalk. I hastened to catch up, walking with wooden footfall beneath the station's overhang. Railside and beneath a lone light post she found an empty bench against the building and sat, glancing down the starlit railway line east to the overpass and west toward the glow of New York City. I took a seat beside her. With a sigh she rubbed the shins of her own boots as she peered across the tracks. Above those brick buildings the strange tower rose like a great mushroom, illuminated only from the ground on a moonless night.
"So here we are." She whispered.
"Yeah."
"You didn't bring your gun." She observed quietly, pulling the blue hem of her skirt over her boots.
"You didn't bring your tears."
We were both silent then, listening to the droning machines and crickets, the screech of an owl off in the dark. The silhouette and scatter of lit windows of buildings before us was daunting. "Between the building on the corner and the one amidst this north face of the wall seems a likely good spot to climb, but it's pretty high. I wouldn't take the walkway...too likely to be seen."
Elizabeth glanced toward a four-wheeled baggage cart down upon the platform beside the tracks. "Maybe we could use that for a boost."
It looked heavy, and even in the dark the embankment…steep. Once more I was the ox.
I managed to drag the thing up the grade on the other side of the tracks but only barely, finding it a solid thing and constructed of heavy board, wooden rails and wheels of steel. It was a hell of a lot heavier than it looked. Standing off to the side of the wall, Elizabeth supervised and offered pithy suggestions but was otherwise useless. Having finally wrested the thing into place, I shoved sticks into its spokes to stop it from rolling and leaned against the wall, catching my breath.
"Come on!" Elizabeth said and I glared at her.
"Just a damned moment, please." I wiped my brow.
She started pacing about, arms crossed, fretting over the dancing of lights upon the heights above...shadows, I realized, of people moving. "Five minutes." A voice loud and crackling announced from over the wall. Elizabeth's eyes widened. "Booker, come on!"
"Fine." I said, checking the cart steady before I climbed atop it. Barely was I able to draw my eyes over the top.
"What do you see!?" Elizabeth whispered anxiously from the ground.
Before me I saw the sides of those tall brick buildings, a gap down their darkened middle that formed a twenty-foot-wide alley. Its paved course way ran perhaps one hundred feet to what appeared an open yard, at least two hundred feet to the tower amidst a great square. Beyond it I could make out the low office building we'd visited earlier at least as far again away. The place was expansive, and seeing it unobscured now, I realized Tesla's Tower had had to be at least three hundred feet tall. "The lighthouse, a bunch of buildings and a few men walking around. You'd be impressed."
"Well, pull me up then!" She demanded, and I looked down to see her upraised hand and impatient eyes. With a clasp it I drew her up upon the cart in one fell swoop. She alighted hand upon my chest, looked about at my sudden feat and, eyes meeting mine, grinned. She still could not see over. "Here." I took her by the hips and pressed her upward, allowing her to pull herself upon the gray concrete top cap. With effort I scrambled up after her. Turned back from the lights, she again admired my handiwork.
"Did you…you do a lot of climbing before?" She said, appreciating my shoulders.
"Once or twice. This place called Columbia." She smirked and side by side we peered across the yard.
The generators remained distant but were louder at this height, undamped by the walls as they had been at the station. From its perimeter Klieg lights illuminated the yard's interior. A loud pop echoed out ahead of us and a giant voice began to speak. "If I can have everyone exit the Arena, please. If we can have everyone exit the Arena, please. We're going to charge the coils in one minute. Again, it is time to exit the Arena prior to tonight's power up."
"What's going on?" She whispered excitedly. Brow furrowed, I shook my head watching them men scatter in their lab coats from the vicinity of the tower.
"Thirty seconds now, if you please." The voice announced. "Twenty...ten." The last of the men out in the yard hastened away and I could see a line across the concrete drawn in chalk. Inside the words were similarly scrawled. "RADIATION HAZARD."
"Five, four, three, two, one...mark." Ahead of us the buildings dimmed precipitously and from beyond the alley I heard the previously idling generators accelerate. Above their building's shadow I could see smoke pouring from stacks, while the spherical cap of the tower began to glow. Around its bottom a ring of lamps illuminated, flashing on piecemeal until they were all fully lit. I heard a pop, saw a spark from thin air, then another...and with a shearing sound from above lightning began to fly into thin air. Soon the top of the thing was crackling with a pall of electricity, illuminating the ground and frontages of the buildings below. It reminded me keenly of what I had seen in Elizabeth's tower. It was what I'd seen in Elizabeth's tower. Was this a Siphon?
"Do you feel anything?" I asked quickly, concerned for her safety. From my side where she was crouching upon the wall, she looked at me puzzled, but not obviously in any pain.
The cracks and flashes got louder as the distant motors ran furious and furiouser. "Five hundred horsepower." Came across the loudspeakers. "Seven Fifty. Engage third and fourth alternators!" Overhead the lightning became a firestorm and the glow expanded, transforming into a luminescent doughnut about the flattened egg, shimmering and writhing as lightning rocketed randomly to large rods grounded upon each of the buildings. "Whoa!" I heard across the sound horns. Twenty-five hundred, three thousand...thirty-five hundred." Off to easternmost building the generators were screaming. "Four thousand. Commence transmission!"
Beneath us the earth thumped and began to hum, the whole of the ground vibrating as lightning annihilated the air above. Such was the light that I could see Elizabeth's awestruck face beside me as if it were day. From the apex of the cap I began to see color now, striations ephemerally shimmering in the air above until one shot off at unimaginable speed, upward, arcing toward the south. Another followed, a red this time, beautiful and stretching out like the Aurora Borealis, followed again and again by colors and hues like ribbons streaming on the Fourth of July. Lying there together, we were both speechless.
"It's beautiful." She finally whispered, lights shimmering and streaming in the wetness of her eyes. I could only look.
"We have resonance!" I heard a different voice call over the speaker."
"All right, then! Good latch up! We hold for an hour until Machrihanish is complete, then we'll power up to ninety-five hundred for Lusitania. Gentlemen, remain clear of the Arena for the next hour while the antenna is in operation!"
About the tower now I could now see in an eerie luminescence that lit the grounds and not the lightning, which continued unabated. It was like the very air was on fire.
"We have to go!" Elizabeth exclaimed.
Looking at the display of raw power before us, I was having second thoughts. "Elizabeth, I don't know..."
She turned and looked with me, almost in tears. "Booker, this is it!"
"What, you feel a tear?" I asked as the lightning stabilized above. No longer was it arcing to the buildings, but oscillated at the top of the tower like a burning sun.
She shook her head. "No, but..." She turned and looked back at the sight with finger in hand, obviously bothered. "But...it is odd. I know something's here. I just feel it."
"I thought you said you didn't feel anything?!"
Before I could react she'd slipped over the wall into a hang and dropped two feet to the alley's pavement, looking backward to me she beckoned with her hand. "Come on! It's this way."
"Jesus..." I mumbled and followed. Alighting on the ground, I ran the hundred feet to join Elizabeth at the far corner of the nearest building, not only hearing and seeing but feeling the electricity in the air. At the base of this four-story edifice, she was looking at her finger, then looking at me. "It is, isn't it?" I looked up, then back to find her perplexed.
"No, but..." She shook her head and dropped into a crouch. Looking back to the light which threw our shadows upon the wall like a strobe, it surely seemed like a tear. It smelled like a tear.
She turned and looked into the window, which turned out to be an empty machine shop. While she was looking, I spied a door open toward the office building and three men emerge with welding glasses on, making their way cautiously about the demarked circle to a pathway that led to a low bunker at the compounds southeast corner, just beside the smoking powerhouse. "Elizabeth!" I whispered. She dropped from where she was looking and her eyes followed mine.
"That's Tesla! She said, covering her mouth with her insulted hand.
"And Joseph." I added. "And Elliott."
Looking out upon the yard I knew that if we moved, we would be seen, but there was no other way. We had to move across the frontage of the building to our left. It was lower than the one Elizabeth had spied but had a flat face with two doors and many windows across its two stories. Looking outward I saw, besides Tesla and his cronies, various technicians making their way about the compound, many in lab coats...and some not. "I've got an idea." I said and stood. Picking a board up from the ground that looked reasonably like something a scientist might carry, I took her in tow and began to walk, shielding my eyes against the blinding discharge above.
As we walked across the windows of the laboratory I could see a handful of workers inside, each working on some assembly with welding equipment. Upon a bench near the door I saw something else...goggles and a rack full of lab coats. I opened the door and stepped inside.
"Booker, they're not going in there!" Elizabeth whispered too loudly. Luckily for us the electrical discharge from the workshop was deafening. She was standing outside looking in, consternation upon her face. I reached out with my arm and yanked her inside.
Presently we emerged with real clipboards in hand, wearing the ubiquitous goggles everyone in the compound seemed sport on and dressed in white lab coats. I'd never imagined myself as a scientist, but then again, I'd never imagined flying an airship either. Now indistinguishable from Tesla's workforce, we made our way along the frontage, just in time to see the doors closing on that bunker-like one story outbuilding with a prominent sign stating: "RESTRICTED ACCESS ONLY." Elizabeth looked at me.
I smirked. "That's what I call an invitation." Casually we walked across the pavement to the building, but, seeing a man in a coat standing outside its main entrance, I steered us instead for the high-walled generator compound. Which was a mistake, for the sound was worse even than the machine shop.
Once out of the man's sight we changed course for the south side of the facility, finding there a step down to a lower door. Descending into its shadows, Elizabeth and I came to stand fifteen feet below the surface, holding our ears though the noise had diminished considerably. In the illumination of a lone incandescent lightbulb a door lay before us. Predictably the thing was locked. We raised our goggles and Elizabeth stepped before me, looking up from the corner of her eye with a smug little grin before kneeling. "Are you certain you want to do this?"
"I love doing this." She sighed, producing a tortured bobby pin from her hair. Looking back to me, she bit her lower lip, feeling her way through the tumblers with eyes heavenward until she got it. I heard a click. "Pull on the door...I can't hold it long!" At her insistence I did. The heavy steel slab opened slowly to reveal a dimly lit service room. Looking behind us for any surveillance, I ducked inside, hastening her before me. I let the door close partway...just in case we needed a fast exit.
It was quieter in here, and as we walked past shelves of equipment and cables and components, we found ourselves at a second door. This one was painted white, made of wood rather than bulkhead steel, its eye-level glass pane frosted. Through its translucence I could see but the shadows of desks…and men at work.
"What do you see?" Elizabeth whispered. I glanced to see her eyes eager for my answer.
"Just shadows." I tried the knob to find it locked. Elizabeth smiled smugly at me and settled to her knees, again with the pin. The doorknob clicked and she looked back, insufferably pleased.
I cracked it open to discover the basement of large concrete bunker, walls lined with equipment twenty feet high, gray metal cabinets covered with electrical meters and pulsing needles. Wiring ran from outside through a great gasket in the walls, hung everywhere in chain across the ceiling. Beneath me Elizabeth poked her head, peering into the brightly lit chamber. On a worktable Tesla was leaning forward with both hands, talking to Joseph and a handful of men I didn't recognize. As Tesla dictated, a bespectacled Elliot took shorthand. Amid them in the center of the chamber, beside Tesla's table and crew, burnt and damaged but for the most part intact, stood twin metal beams extending ten from the ground at the vertical, amid them a hanging central oblate egg, a standing disk three feet in diameter ten feet below it and about the braces, thick and entwining cables. Twin bulbs hung inert to the central, flattened cap's sides.
It was an Oracule. A tear machine.
"Booker..." Elizabeth said, the emotion welling in her words. Are...you seeing...what...what I'm seeing?"
"Yeah..." I answered, barely able to believe it. She was a bloodhound. "So now what do we do?" Where she'd been crouching her heeled boot suddenly gave way, and in a gambit to regain her balance leant her full weight to the door. The knob escaped my hand and the thing swung wide, smashing backward with a clatter into the cinder block of the corridor wall. Out in the laboratory floor the scientists looked up from their conversation, pens stilled, eyes dismayed and upon us. All I could think was shit.
Spilled upon the slab, Elizabeth looked up. For the longest moment the scientists were dead silent, jaws agape. Joseph's clipboard slipped from his hand where he was standing, the thing clattering upon the concrete floor, papers spilling haphazard amidst the men's legs. Wafting on the breeze of a cooling fan, one sheet glided across the floor like a magic carpet and settled at Elizabeth's knees.
"Well, just don't stand there…" Tesla barked, mustache twitching, eyes fixed upon us like Elizabeth's crazy flashlight. "Get them!"
I'd seen threatening men before, men like Comstock's Handymen who I'd thought would pound me into dust.
These fellows weren't them.
Despite their bosses' order none of them moved, each instead looking to one another in their glasses, and jackets and bow ties like scared rabbits. In disgust Tesla parted from the table. Gathering himself, he stomped toward us. "Elliott! Fetch Mr. Parsons immediately!"
"Yes, Mister Tesla." The brown-haired man said and made for the concrete steps leading up.
Tesla was lean but fearless. Seeing his men weren't about to act, he came at us himself. "And get the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department to have them send a car over!" Halfway to us he seemed to reassess the situation, grasping for the added security of a crowbar upon an adjacent workbench. His eyes burned with fury. "You had better not move if you know what is good for you! Who are you spying for, Edison? Marconi!?"
At the outburst his acolytes cringed, a dark-haired one with a thin countenance similar to their leader gathering his courage to garner a heavy book, one they'd been pouring over at the table.
From behind Tesla he approached, wielding the thing in both hands like an awkward cudgel. "Tell him, then! Tell him who you are!"
With a jaundiced eye Tesla half turned his head back to the man. Chastened, the fellow backed off.
"No!" Elizabeth exclaimed, managing to sit up upon her haunches. "We're not! We're not...not 'working' for anyone!"
"LIAR!" Tesla shouted, a Balkans accent discernable, something I'd hardly caught from him earlier that morning. Beside him his assistant lunged, the book coming with him. Hand to shoulder, Tesla stayed his attack. I got the distinct impression his associate was actually relieved.
"I say again, tell me who you are?!" Tesla demanded anew, and I got the sense we might be here all night...or at least until the coppers arrived. The door was still open behind us.
"We're…not here to hurt you and we're not spies." I said, rising from the cold floor and pulling myself up by the door jam. Elizabeth's hand was still raised, her head turned, eyes averted from the book's impending blow. By her hand I drew her to my side. "Now you know how it feels." I mumbled as she took shelter behind me. "At least they weren't throwing them."
For a moment she met my gaze and her eyes narrowed.
"Dammit, Man, speak!" Tesla exploded and again the man feinted. To his dismay I grabbed him by the arm and disarmed him, tossing the heavy tome upon the nearby workbench with a sideways snap of hand.
"Booker..." Elizabeth said, eyes upon it. The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Rosalind Lutece. Its cover read. At my action Tesla raised his bar higher.
"We're unarmed..." I said with growing anger. "But don't threaten the lady again or I'll shove that bar and book up your asses."
"Booker!" Elizabeth admonished. Hands raised she stepped about, pushing me backward. By now the man we'd seen guarding the entryway above was descending the concrete steps, and upon seeing us a Billy club slipped into his grasp.
"Spies, Mr. Parsons." Tesla asserted, eyes unwavering from mine. "Please detain and remove them to the Front Office where the Sheriff can take them to the jailhouse." Still fixated, he continued. "Mr. Ryan's assistants, you are. I recognize you from this morning, when you came into my house! Ryan...spying upon me, no doubt for...but for whom!? Is there no end to man's treachery?"
Passing through scientists and technicians, calm but resolute, Parsons approached. "Sir, Miss...I am afraid you shall have to accompany me or there shall be unpleasantness." Braver than the rest, he reminded me to the Constabulary men in Columbia, brown hair well groomed…clean shaven. So earnestly committed to his master. He'd die to protect his rabbits.
"Look, we're not spies." I grumbled again.
Elizabeth tugged at my jacket sleeve, looking to me with concern. "Thinking about it now, technically we are, Booker."
"Elizabeth!"
She pushed away from my grimace with a cautious look upon her face, brushing her hair back but keeping her hands aloft. "But we're not spies for your competitors...we're spies for, well, us!"
"No!" Tesla hissed. "Ryan you spy for, and to think I called him friend!"
"No!" She shook her head.
"Take them away." Tesla ordered.
At the words Parsons pressed forward, grasping Elizabeth by the shoulder. Before she could react I'd grabbed the man's hand and club, eye to eye with murderous intent, feeling the veins in my temples about to burst. "Friend, we shall come with you peaceable-like, but you will not lay hands on the Lady again or you will end up stone cold dead." Slowly I overpowered him, pressing so that he could feel my strength. Subtly his countenance frayed, and he knew what I said to be true.
Covering his fluster, he looked us over. "Do...you have any weapons?"
"Just a bent bobby pin." I answered looking at her. Her face was fraught.
Parsons gestured toward the door with his shaking Billy club. "The door is this way. Please follow me."
Elizabeth's face fell. Realizing that short of bloodshed this was the end of the line, I took her arm in mine and we followed Parson's lead. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth. We tried." At our passage Tesla's rabbits looked upon us like a lynch mob, glowering upon these intruders. I'd seen sadness on Elizabeth's part in the weeks since Columbia, but nothing like this.
"I would suggest you retain a lawyer, Mr. Montgomery, if even that is your name." Tesla said from behind. "For you shall certainly be requiring him."
Beside me Elizabeth stopped in her tracks, eyes having trailed upon the discolored side braces and round, downward facing cap above the Oracule's stepping disc. Runs of heavy cable ran up its sides, wires flowing in and out from associated components. Her brow furrowed, focused on what looked like a bulbous coil and the fuse box beneath it. Several of the components looked recently familiar.
"Mr. Montgomery...you gave your word." Parsons hazarded, regripping his club.
"The main capacitors need to be in parallel, not series." Elizabeth announced, stepping over to the device. Aside from some obviously new parts she referred to, it looked burnt and in poor shape.
A mumble rose from the assembled men and Parsons gave me a stolid look. "Will you stop dawdling and accompany me!"
"What do you mean, the capacitors must be in parallel?" A voice said from behind us. It wasTesla's. "And what do you know of this..."
"Tear machine?" Elizabeth finished to a gasp from the attendant crowd. "Only that you'll damage it if you try to run it like this." She stopped, looking up to see all eyes upon her including Tesla's. Her brow furrowed. "But...you already have damaged it, haven't you?" Everyone in the bunker stood in stunned disbelief, including me. In the glare of all those eyes she knelt, pulled the little blocks out and examined one. "That's why there was only one…"
Tesla shouted, "No, do not touch that! It is immensely dangerous!"
"2 Farads?" She said with a quizzical eye and a light chuckle. "No wonder Mr. Ryan's wares are in such demand...that's quite beyond anything I'd seen in my books." She inserted them into the breadboard in a different order. "But I don't see why you'd think them dangerous yet, Mr. Tesla." She answered with a grim look to the device. "You've only received them this morning and I highly doubt you've…you've figured out how to power the machine from its obviously crippling damage."
"Who are you?" Tesla asked, the anger in his voice replaced with sheer astonishment. "What can you...how can you possible know about this generator, something that I can assure you that in the entirety of the civilized world, besides those in this chamber, no one knows about?!"
She stood upright and with her clenched hand threw a heavy copper switch on the support brace. Behind her the frame shook and began to hum. For a moment she studied it. "You really did burn it out. You're going to need a new voltage regulator and spark gap generator...and maybe a lot more."
"Who are you?!" Tesla demanded.
With a demure grin she turned and looked up, blue eyes bright…hands clasped before her. "I'm Elizabeth!"
#
"But Mr. Tesla, what if she's damaged it!?" One of the men around the table finally said as he pressed forward. His lack of faith took some of the exuberance from my smile. I had to admit that I'd been pleased with myself despite being puzzled at how I could have known such a thing. I'd had my books of course and had always enjoyed subjects scientific and cryptologic, but seeing how this contraption worked so clearly in my head was just a bit eerie.
"It doesn't appear to be further damaged." Tesla said, approaching cautiously, almost in disbelief. "Young lady, may I ask again, who are you working for and how could you possibly know of this?"
My eyes found a concerned, somewhat awed fa...Booker. I crossed my arms. "You...you wouldn't believe me, but I tell you the truth that "we" are only us…the two of us. We...we've come here to..."
"We've come here to find out who else knew about tears." Booker said, looking to Parsons and passing to my side. My name is..."
"Booker DeWitt." I said for him. "And I am his client, Elizabeth, err, Comstock. I am a...researcher in a laboratory out…uh, west."
"And she hired me to investigate some, uh..."
"Readings." I nodded, feeling my hair trying to fall and pulling it back into the ribbon.
"That she's been, uh, getting from her..."
"From my equipment." I turned, panning across the Oracule and the panoply of wiring about it, then back to Tesla and his cohort. After a moment I realized I was holding my finger. "I'd detected indications of something impossible, quite impossible. Of...of a natural shear in the ether. Such things should not occur naturally, at least."
"You are a scientist?" Tesla said incredulously as he approached.
"A woman?" Another said and hushed whispers and mumbles erupted.
Tesla slapped the wooden table before them, coming within a foot of Booker and myself. I felt Booker take my hand. I looked at him and smiled. "By my, err… crude detection apparatus," Again I held my aggrieved pinkie. "It seemed to be east, and after a bit of research its location became a foregone conclusion."
"Whose laboratory do you work for?!" Tesla demanded.
"Her own." Booker said. "It is privately funded, so please forgive us if we do not divulge its patrons."
"A female running a research laboratory?" One of Tesla's scientist groused. "Preposterous...you, Sir, are full of lies. You expect us not only to swallow that fabrication, but believe that you have an instrumented laboratory capable of detecting a dimensional breach when even we, the foremost experts from the entire globe have nothing of the sort?"
I noticed Tesla seem to hedge at that thought, and let it sit for a moment before responding. It was odd to defend myself before so many people...so many men. I found myself bunching the fore of my skirt with nervous hands. "And how else might you explain our presence? Or my..." I paused, looking again at the machine's components, knowing somehow precisely the manner in which this contraption worked. "Knowledge of the device's inner workings?"
Tesla nodded to Parsons and the man stepped to his side. "Tommy, you shall no longer be required. Please ensure the door these people...our guests...entered through is secured." For a moment Parsons seemed to protest but Tesla's stern glare sent him back down the corridor toward our point of entry. "And please, have Elliott ring the Sheriff and inform him that his patrolmens' services shall no longer be necessary."
"Yes, Mr. Tesla." He said, took through the door and disappeared.
"Mr. DeWitt. Miss Comstock. These are your true names?"
Beside me Booker sighed and with a glance I admonished him. "They are, indeed, Mister Tesla. Your fame proceeds you."
"But not enough to simply introduce yourselves this morning." He said with crossed arms and suspicious eyes. Eyes that were as blue as mine, and quite striking.
Realizing that there might be more in his adamant gaze than fear or simple intellectual curiosity, I allowed myself a smile. In the scant weeks I'd been in New York I'd become aware to the plight of women, nearly second-class citizens unable to participate formally in politics, but I'd not had insight to the sense of scorn when those boundaries were broken. "Would you have believed us, had we done so? And I find it surprising that you feel a woman incapable of presiding over a laboratory, particularly when a woman was the one who created this." I ran my fingertips across the Oracule's closer vertical.
"How can you possibly know about Rosalind?" Tesla looked as though he'd seen a ghost.
I didn't have a reasonable response, or should I say lie. Lacking one I chose the truth. "Because she was my mentor."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty." I answered with undue confidence.
"What you say is inexcusable, girl. You expect me to believe this when you would have been but a babe when she..." He hesitated. "She perished. You mock me, and her memory."
"No." I said, angst surely upon my face. Booker knew what I was thinking for his eyes widened and he shook his head 'no.' Though I wished that I could simply tell them the truth, I knew Booker was right...the truth was too strange. "I promise you, all of you..." I said, glancing about to the men whose eyes were still upon me, especially Tesla. "I do not dishonor the woman's name...her legacy is as important to me as you." My appeal did not seem to have the weight I'd hoped, so, feeling pressed, I made my way to the workbench and retrieved the woman's book.
"What I mean..." I said, opening its cover, "Was that as a young girl I discovered her book in..." I glanced to Booker, scrambling desperately for my next words. "In my father's library. I fell in love with it." About me the men's expressions hadn't changed, though from nearby Booker egged me on. "I've always loved matters of the physical and natural sciences, particularly these new fields of..." I glanced about. "Electronics and...Quantum Mechanics." As I said the latter Tesla ripped the text from my hands, shocking me.
"A young woman as you would never be so equipped."
"Then explain to me how I know about this?" I looked to the machine and ran my fingers over its frame. "Or this..."
I walked toward the wall, parting the scientists. Amid their condemnatory eyes I strode up to a green chalkboard. Taking chalk in hand I thought for a moment, looking back to the book. With all those eyes upon me I nearly panicked, trying to remember what I'd been so eager to do. Then it came to me, like out of the fog, crystallizing clearly in my mind's eye like a photograph.
I turned and wrote 'Ψ', scrawling out equals and after it then the tortured mathematical operators, constants and variables of Rosalind Lutece's Wave Function. The oddest thing is, I understood it. "This looks impressive but is rather not, for it is not particularly powerful. In fact, it simply describes the behavior of a single electron bound in a hydrogen like atom. The solution is, however, analytical, meaning it can be precisely calculated, though the solution itself is probabilistic rather than specific. In other words, the best we can know of an electron, the most elementary of quantum particles, is its distribution in space and time as a consequence of conservation of energy." I then scrawled another set of equations using operators I understood but only once I'd written them down. "However, using Dossler n-dimensional matrix notation and imagining each potential position of that electron in an orthogonal rotation into a complex dimension normally inaccessible to an observer constrained to what might be called a "brane," one can come up with a solution that shows the distribution patterns of the electron, what you might call shells, are actually summarizations of an orbiting particle over the sum of "n" interacting branes that provide the 'depth,' or..." I put the chalk down. "What we might call universes."
I turned and looked at them, brushing my hands of white powder. "Because the electron is small and to a greater degree than most elementary particles able to move off its brane. What Rosalind discovered was that with the concerted application of high electrical voltage, parallel branes normally inaccessible to one another could be drawn together and superimposed. The electron can naturally travel between branes and with some effort such as Lutece's, so might more massive particle systems." I looked at the tear machine. "Including us."
Tesla had stopped breathing.
After a moment I heard him continue. "Gentlemen, would you be so kind as to leave us for a moment?" With their eyes similarly wide at my monologue, none of them moved. "Please." He reiterated. As if woken from a trance the scientists began to whisper and mumble, turning one by one and heading for the stairs Parsons had taken. "Willie, Alfred, Joseph, please remain."
"Where the hell did that come from?" Booker mumbled beneath his breath as he attended my side, eyes as bewildered as the others. I glanced at him, unable to still the worry because I had no earthly idea. Yet there it was, and in my mind I surely understood it. More than understood it. Seeing the inconsonance in my face, Booker cocked his head.
Thoughts flew fast now, understandings that I questioned whether or not were my own. What was 'my own?' I'd read books my whole life, and until now I'd never quite understood that when I read them a time or two, I just knew them. Not just knew, but understood. I'd learned to draw and paint from books from a young age, learned the easy talent of picking locks that seemed so befuddling yet invaluable to Booker. I'd taught myself cryptography and unlocked hidden codes in newspapers from all over the world. I'd read a book on Quantum Mechanics and not only understood it, but was able to act upon it and deliver scholarly lectures. Only now had it dawned upon me that perhaps others, like Booker, could not. And I knew how to build a tear machine, or at least potentially fix one that someone else had built.
What was I?
It was an answer I knew for the word began with an 'S,' and I didn't want to think of it further. I looked at Booker, his brow still distressed because he didn't understand how wrong he'd been.
I heard the door close and with Tesla and his three we were alone. "How do you know that?" The lanky scientist asked. "The brightest minds in the world have looked at that book and come up little more than babbling monkeys, yet you crystallize...encapsulate hundreds of pages of opaque Lutece speak and equations into a few sentences." Looking downward, his eyes found my finger.
"I suppose I've always been gifted." I said quietly, putting the 'thing' away, feeling as I had in our exodus of the Monument that I was somehow not quite human. No. I told myself. I was different. And, looking at Booker, I knew he loved me...maybe more than anything.
"What do you know about the tear machine, and how?"
"Other than it being an interdimensional gateway?" I said, turning back to them. Again Tesla looked at as though the very words I'd said were lightning. Needing a more concrete answer, I stepped to the machine's side brace and knelt. "This isn't of the newest manufacture." I said, noting some of the singed wiring and components having manufacture dates in the late 1880s.
"As I alluded to earlier, we have been refurbishing it." Tesla said stiffly. "It came into our possession but...a year ago...from an anonymous donor. Along with a considerable allotment of funding to plumb its function and, if possible, conduct its restoration."
As he spoke I'd come to focus on what looked like a kinetoscope seemly attached to that right brace of the device by an intricate array of wiring. Glancing into its window, I found it to have two external thumbwheels that seemed to twist in latitude and longitude. A third wheel was labeled "Elevation." For some reason the numbers entered seemed oddly familiar, though I could not place my finger upon why. I pulled back and looked at Booker, who had by now approached, standing at my side. Still perplexed, I turned to Tesla and his men. "Well, it is in dismal condition, but I do think I might be able to help you bring it back to function, if that is, you would have a woman to work with you."
There were hushed whispers now, and Tesla with furrowed brow examined me. "You understand this so-called "Lutece Mechanics?"
"Quantum Mechanics, yes." I said, realizing as I spoke that the very name was anachronistic. At least here in Booker's world. My world, I thought. "Which replaces on a small scale what used to be called Classical Mechanics." Still they looked at me. "But the workings of this machine have little to do with that. From what I can see..." And what I knew, looking at the device. "It is a straightforward matter of applied electrostatics. Seeing the marvel outside, I would believe your benefactor's trust in you to be well-placed. Still, whatever you did to the machine, its more delicate components are burned out and must be replaced. The design should still work once the damaged bits are substituted."
"Madame Lutece was apparently not very good at documentation. We have replaced several components, yet a return to operability eludes us." Joseph said.
"Well, I can assure you that in its present state your device will not power tonight because Mr. DeWitt and myself are put upon and tired. What is the contraption upon the side?" I said, glancing again toward the kinetoscope.
"My Dear, as of this moment we were hoping you might tell us. I assure you..." Joseph said, fiddling with his sideburn as he followed my gaze. "That our efforts, though we should wish them confident, are but cursory. An attempt to gain understanding."
"You seem to have attempted 'understanding' at an earlier date and failed." I observed to the silence of the room.
The black-haired man Tesla had called Willie spoke. "We...we ran the machine yesterday morning for several hours as part of a trial. We were trying to see how our repairs would hold. Unfortunately, the result is before you."
"And before that?" I asked. Everyone including Booker looked to Tesla.
"We had not run it, and in fact to the best of our knowledge it had not been run in decades...though we had been preparing to. After months of delving Joseph, Willie and Alfred had managed to make inroads on the electrical continuity, and from the readings we had done, our inner circle here had an inkling of what we were attempting. With the benefit of our patron's donated funds, we'd replaced the electronics. Joseph and I had conducted the pre-power runs and everything seemed in order. But in truth we had no idea..." For a moment Tesla stopped, face troubled. "No idea of what to expect. With the holiday at hand and families to spend time with, we had decided to call it an early day with the intent to implement our plans the following day. When we returned Friday morning, we found to our horror the machine half-melted."
His thumb went to his chin and he seemed lost in thought. "My watchman, Parsons, related that there had been an electrical disturbance in the bunker that night but no signs of fire. Seeing as he was not allowed to enter without Joseph or Alfred or Willie present..." His silence allowed us to draw our own conclusions.
"So, Tesla..." Booker interrupted, drawing the men's attention. "I'm sorry about your experiment, but it's late. Since you've called the cops off of us, just exactly what are we getting at here?"
Tesla's eyes met his, then slipped to mine. "I suppose I would be offering this young lady gainful employment."
#
I didn't know how late it was when Joseph dropped us off at Hapgood's parking lot, but as his Model T clattered before the darkened buildings, I could swear I saw light in the east. Joseph was still looking at us warily as I helped Elizabeth out. She thanked me and with gratitude we both turned to our driver. The one thing I hadn't expected at the beginning of our nocturnal foray had been a cordial trip back to our accommodations courtesy of the people we'd burgled.
"Until tomorrow." Joseph said, tipping his bowler with that same mix of disbelief he'd evinced ever since Elizabeth had humiliated every man in the room including myself. I sensed that he wanted to say something, not so much to me as to her…an apology perhaps?
As his vehicle disappeared down the road and taillights turned, I felt Elizabeth take my hand. She'd been quiet since the evening's faceoff and now seemed so very tired. I was worried for her.
"You got what you wanted." I said, walking alongside her up the steps to the boardwalk, just outside the bungalows. As we surmounted its inches, I could feel the breeze at my back blowing out to sea…hear the gentle wash of the waves a hundred feet below. In the east the horizon was alight, just to the left of the Pavilion that obscured the growing monolith down the beach.
"Because you haven't said a word since we left the compound." I felt her hand tighten upon mine and she looked up at me, the light of the rising moon caught in her gaze.
"It's kind of hard to say anything after that, don't you think?" In truth I was still reeling from what I'd heard down in the bunker. "How do you even know all that?" She was holding her hand almost desperately…as if somehow she might lose me. I didn't understand what she'd told those men, but I knew enough of human nature to discern that neither did they.
"I'm...I'm sorry." She answered as we made our way around to our lodging. "Sometimes I can't help myself. I'm not even certain how I know some things...these things."
I didn't want to tell her how I really felt, how proud of her genius but how numbingly ignorant it had made me feel. I remembered back to my childhood in the one room schoolhouse I'd attended for a time, the primers and Bibles that had been our only texts. Rote memorization, counting...wishing I were somewhere else on a hot, summer prairie afternoon. Then being at home and wishing to God I was back there. Even as her father, what could I offer to a girl like her? How could I lo...
I stopped the thought dead.
"Booker?" She said, voice rising. I looked down to feel her hands in mine, beset eyes with mine.
"We're here." We'd stopped before our door. I opened it and she entered, turning to wait for me. In her bones she knew something was wrong. I wanted to tell her how I felt, but I knew that in doing so my inadequacy would be laid bare. I'd saved her from Comstock, but I'd never considered that eventually I might have to save her from myself. Behind me I closed the door and turned on the lights. "I'll turn down the bed."
Seeing my face, she came to me and hugged me. "Booker..." She didn't say anything else for a long time. Against the cool let in from the night, with her head upon my chest she felt so very warm. "Please don't be mad at me. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have."
"You did what you had to." I sighed. "So, this job, you're serious about helping them?"
She glanced upward to me, sitting down upon the peeled sheets of the bed with my hands still in hers. As women do, with the subtlest of tugs she brought me to her side, her thimbled hand rising to brush my hair...eyes begging forgiveness. "What would you have me do? Don't we need the money? He's offering fifty dollars a week! I'd have to be cra..."
"You don't have to do this. We can go." I answered tersely, pushing the burning coals back into the recesses of my mind. "Look, I have a bad feeling about this. You cannot have forgotten what we've only just been through! What could you possibly hope to achieve?"
Her hand kept to mine, though the thought made her uneasy. "I can't…can't help what I feel. And I want to understand. I...I want to know how it all works, why I was like I was." She stopped, considering the thought. "And why I am like I am."
"So you can figure out how to do what you did before."
"No!" She said too loudly. Her face turned conciliatory. Absently she was toying with her finger. Did she even notice that? "M...maybe. What if I'm..."
I took her into my arms and hugged her anew. "I'll never be able to know what it is like to have the gift you do, but I remember what Columbia was like. I remember that elevator too, and that damned...bird...thing. And I remember..."
She pushed back, looking up to me with narrowed eyes. Booker, you remember what?"
So shocking it was to hear her ask that…even that she'd need to ask. But then again, she didn't know…she couldn't know because she hadn't been there. But all of her other possibles had in that Elizabethan nightmare in blue and white. Of my dispatch I'd never told her…and wasn't about to. "I'm going to wash up, but if you want this, maybe you can do it for the summer. Maybe it will even pay our way to Paris." I kissed her upon the forehead and glanced to the bed. "I just think you're playing with fire."