8. Eight is for "Octopus" - Thursday, August 1st, 1912
About us at the other benches dozens of Tesla's workers ate, though only Parsons and me from the scientist's security men. It was just before noon and the sun was high, the shadows outside slim upon the concrete...another hot, clear, mid-summer Long Island day. Out the windows I could see the grass blowing alongside the driveway, the tree line emerald across the southern fields against a cloudless blue. I'd been looking for her to walk in, as I had the day before. She'd said she'd likely not be able to join me, but with a grin kissed my cheek and told me I'd see her tonight. I'd watched her walk to the Bunker again, long green skirt, boots and white lab coat…meet her new 'friends.' I supposed that uneventful days manning a gate shack had to be better than starving to death.
"So, I gather that you were in the Army, DeWitt?" Parsons asked, looking up from his lunch tray across our cafeteria table.
"Yeah." I answered dryly. "You also?" Someone laughed too loudly down the table and I looked his way, finding a broad man in dungarees chortling with his mates.
"No, I am afraid not, but I did serve with the Pennsylvania State Police and the New York City Police Department for a good many years. Might I ask where?"
"Where?" I puzzled with an absent fork stir of my food.
"Where did you serve?" He clarified, sawing at a fork-skewered piece of chicken with his dull steel knife. "With your high-wire introduction the other night, you came across as having a martial demeanor to more than just me. I was wondering where you might have nurtured it."
"The Philippines." I didn't bother with the silverware as I inhaled my own piece of fowl. "Before that I was in the Cavalry for a time."
"The Philippines?" He said, evincing a look of distaste. "Sorry to hear that, my friend. Awful business. But you said also the 'Cavalry'?"
I nodded. "Seventh."
"The Seventh Cavalry? Not Little Bighorn, I suppose? He chuckled as did a handful of electricians eavesdropping alongside him.
"Not hardly." I said, giving them all the eye. "But I was at Wounded Knee." Amused faces remained unchanged, telling me they had no idea where that place was, nor its significance. Maybe I didn't, either…after all, this place wasn't Columbia where a, Wounded Knee had been remembered in force. For years that memory had ridden me like a remora, and I'd despised myself for it, but there...there my atrocity had become the defining moment upon which everything hinged...not for any real reason other than that I...Booker Comstock...had wanted everyone to know what a swell fellow I'd been. Now it was nothing more than a forgotten footnote...dead bodies strewn amid the snow. "Why so interested, and, if you don't mind me asking, how you came to be here?"
"I ask because I would swear I know your face from…from somewhere, but the happenstance eludes me." Parsons seemed to think for a moment, taking a bit of his potatoes before continuing. "Well, I told you I served with Pennsylvania's finest." I saw him hesitate, only an ephemeral thought flashing through his mind, but I knew enough about people to see something was there. "Then a few years ago my wife and I decided to move from Pittsburgh and try our luck there. I spent a few years working in the Bronx and then Manhattan. I suppose I was inspired by Commissioner Roosevelt's legacy. I thought that perhaps I might make a difference."
My chuckle did not go unnoticed. "From your presence here, I would estimate that you discovered not?"
"Perhaps it was not the paragon of policing I might have hoped for, but all and all the Department tried. There were other...complications." He set his fork down and glanced me in the eye. "I was tasked as part of a team investigating a series of brutal killings in the Harlem area. Killings that led back to an incestuous relationship between certain criminal elements and what I later found to be corrupt city officials. Some in the police force. When I tried to expose these unseemly dealings to my superiors, my life and my family's lives were threatened. A good friend of mine, one who was tied into the internal dealings of the cabal of men who were the force behind the Force, recommended that I leave the city. I had never taken his words lightly, and though I felt a duty to my Precinct I also had an obligation to Carol and my girls. I had made the acquaintance of Mr. Tesla when he was still working out of his Hudson Street laboratory. He was looking for assurance and security, and in a way so was I." Beside the fork he placed his knife neatly at a forty-five-degree angle across the corner of his tray. "It has been a mutually beneficial arrangement."
"You have a wife?" A knot rose in my stomach, having so recently contemplated killing the man. How many of Comstock's followers had had families? How many of Aguinaldo's? I knew about Bigfoot's... I'd seen them all. "Daughters?"
"Yes." We've been married thirteen years now, and every other year a girl." He smirked. "I've five, little blue-eyed toe head beauties aged twelve to two, all in dresses like their mother." He dabbed his mouth with the white linen of his napkin. "I would give my life for them."
"That's a lot of mouths to feed. I'm surprised you make ends meet on the slim pickings Mr. "Mutually Beneficial" provides."
Though the smile remained his brow tensed. "Your salary I suppose we're commenting on? I should think you would know that new hires aren't going to receive handsome compensation until they've proven their worth."
"It seems Eliza...Miss Comstock has." I countered, astounded by the financial largesse Tesla had retained her with.
"That is Mr. Tesla's decision, Mr. DeWitt. Not mine. I believe it was obvious the other night that her talents were...considerable. Mr. Tesla has been struggling with a myriad of intractable problems here at Wardenclyffe, puzzles I barely comprehend. You charge…she is a woman, true, and Nikola has his opinions on that matter, but if she comes through on her promise, he shall obviously pay." He placed the napkin on the table, behind him one of Tesla's Italian mechanics hazarding us with curled mustache and brooding eyes as he took his gray steel tray to the wash. "Prove yourself here and I shall ensure your compensation improves."
My ears perked up. "I must sound ungrateful. I promise you I am not, Mr. Parsons. And...I'm sorry about the other night...how we met. You'd have had every right to shoot us both dead, but frankly it wasn't my idea."
"Not your idea? To break in and eavesdrop?"
I shook my head and laughed aloud. "Hers."
He cast a rather smug look over his mug before taking a long swig of coffee. "I see…they can be intractable, can they not? Alas, what is life without them?" He looked away. "Mr. Tesla prefers that we do not carry sidearms, so you are lucky."
"Indeed." I'd been wrong about the guns. What kind of security men didn't carry guns?
"So, if it was 'her' idea, what then the girl's interest here?" He asked, putting the coffee cup down upon the table's white wood and leaning back. "This business about being spies...what laboratory could you possibly be from?"
I looked to my left and right, seeing empty seats on the bench where previously interested parties had been. "Thomas." I said, looking him in the eye. "The reason we didn't tell Tesla about Miss Comstock's laboratory is..." I sighed. "Is because there is no laboratory, and even had I tried I stop her, I would have been unable for long to restrain the woman."
"If there is not a laboratory..."
"She can feel them, Thomas…the damned tears. It's like...hearing to her...or scent. Like a moth to a flame, she can feel the machine in operation."
Parsons didn't speak, but I saw in his face suppressed astonishment…or perhaps, the suspicion of witchcraft. Eventually he regained control of his temperament and nodded to the door. "Perhaps we should continue our survey of the facilities and your duties?"
#
Parsons escorted me out into the yard through the cafeteria's wooden back door. Over the past two days I'd discovered a lot of things about Wardenclyffe, or the City of Light, as Tesla's people liked to call it. One was that my favorite place, the Oersted Cafeteria, was an adjunct to the office building, the space that had hosted our meeting between Tesla and Ryan the Tesla three days before. The compound itself was some seven hundred feet in length and width, roughly square and hemmed in by the east-west country road to its south and Long Island Railroad right-of-way to the north. About its periphery buildings rose, butted up against the wall Elizabeth and I had surmounted.
Tesla had greeted us just after noon the day before, elated over the prospect of Elizabeth joining him. She'd been excited and amid her effusive thanks he'd been cordial to me, but I'd known my place. After discussing with Elizabeth his expectations, particularly how he envisioned her fitting into his research, Tesla had bundled her off to the so called 'Bunker' while Parsons was given the task of showing the afterthought his new 'job.' The subsequent tour had lasted a few hours, mostly the twin flagpoles and front gatehouse with the remainder deferred. Even though the separation had been short hours, every one of them I felt apart from her. And now another day…
As we walked, Parsons informed me that Tesla employed about one hundred and fifty people at his compound, including guards to keep people away. He'd paused on the last one, smirking at the irony. Apparently, Tesla feared that someone might steal some of his inventions and he wished to keep his affairs quiet. At that point I thought I might get a few hours more in the guard shack out front, watching cows out in the pasture and checking guest lists for the occasional arrival as I had the previous afternoon and morning. I was, however, in for a surprise.
"Now that you have the early morning routine of checking the laboratory's people in as they arrive, Mr. DeWitt, I believe it is time to follow up with some introductions."
"You can call me Booker." I said, eyes gazing upward along the clean dark spars of the tower of fire.
"Like the colored fellow?"
I nodded. "Yeah, like him."
"Hmmm." Parsons said, glancing towards a coterie of white coats making their way from the southeastern building toward the cafeteria. "An interesting name. Those are our radiant power experts, by the way. The dark-haired man is Johnnison, the one beside him with the tight mustache is Hartmann...both scientists. Meyer and Alfie Peters round them out. All are great men in their fields, or so I hear." The latter I recognized from the night before...Alfred." We approached and Parsons introduced me, the men cordial but in a manner suggestion they wished minimal delay. They headed on their way as did we.
Glancing across the surrounding brick buildings I found frontages of broad windows, the majority levered open for ventilation in the rising morning warmth. Inside these buildings I could see craftsmen hard at work and heard the barrage of fans, reminding me vaguely of Finkton. Though much larger, Finkton hadn't this many people in such a small area, at least while we'd been there, and I couldn't help but be impressed. Here bright men found employ, striving under this one man's vision to build something I could barely fathom. I wondered as I walked alongside Parsons if my other 'self' might have.
"The office building used to be the old machine shop before we outgrew it." Parsons continued, gesturing with thumb over shoulder back toward the cafeteria. "It was the original building, a lone building, designed by Stanford White of Manhattan around the turn of the century. The newer structures..." His eyes panned one by one to the surrounding edifices that loomed above our shoulders. "Are of more recent design. He and Mister Tesla have participated in several efforts together, and when the second tower went up Mr. White was keen to be involved, as was Mr. Crowe."
I looked at the octagonal trestle and ball above it gleaming bronze in the sun. "Second tower?"
"Indeed." Parsons said, pointing toward the foundation. "That is not the first, and in fact the whole of the old office building was uprooted and moved to a more peripheral location several years ago in order to open up the center of the compound."
"For this second tower?" I reiterated, presuming without asking that there had been a first.
"Precisely. This land was donated to us by Peter Warden, the founder of Wardenclyffe...oh..." He smirked. "Hence the name. Mr. Tesla does know how to butter his bread. Of course, Shoreham Village was also built under his auspices. I heard from Joseph that was where you were staying?"
"We are." I confirmed, feeling even now the Bungalows draining the green lifeblood from our pockets.
"I'm not particularly keen on this whole matter, so if my facts are somewhat off, do forgive me. I believe about 1890 the Long Island Railroad announced a planned expansion north along the Sound...the Wading River Branch. Mr. Warden was an Ohio banker at the time, and with the announcement saw an opportunity. He bought up extensive landholdings in and around the old area of what is now Woodville Road to develop a residential community, a community that in an example of extreme humility he chose to name Wardenclyffe."
"At the time Mr. Tesla had just returned to New York City from Colorado Springs, and, seeking a locus or attraction for his new community, indeed perhaps some free advertising in the papers, he invited Nikola to Wardenclyffe as the site for an experimental laboratory. For Mr. Tesla, I suppose two hundred acres of land for the endeavor was difficult to pass on and with the project gathering steam, the Boss convinced a syndicate of New York bankers to finance the project."
"So, uh, just what is this all about?" I asked hands in pockets. A pair of bearded men in white coats walked by. Parsons waved to them in their passing, the kind of easy camaraderie I'd not had since my time in the Army had come to a close.
"Well, I am the man's security, not one of his scientists, but this tower, and it has been widely published in the papers..." Papers, I could tell by Parson's countenance, that he presupposed I did not take. "Is one of a growing number of similar aerials transmitting information and electricity wirelessly around the world. The other night we completed a transmission to Scotland and an airship over the North Atlantic bound for Boston...final proof that the age of radiant power and communications are at hand."
"And what advantage is that?" I asked, wondering why I'd never heard of this. The scheme seemed impressive, but I supposed all papers looked the same from at bottom of a bottle. We'd approached a building to the southeast corner of the compound and Parsons held the door for me. Above it a sign read "Drawings and Prototyping."
"Airships must carry fuel, fuel that must be lofted either by equal buoyancies of hydrogen gas or helium here in the States. Take away the need to loft that gas, enable compact and lightweight polyphaser induction motors such as Mr. Tesla has continued to perfect, then the lifting capacity and economy of these vessels becomes exponentially greater, as does their speed and efficiency. By extension seagoing vessels might no longer need carry heavy fuel oil, and trucks and automobiles be freed of the need to fuel. Even the aero plane, that modern wonder, could be made an order of magnitude more efficient and able to carry practicable loads with the elimination of its bulky power plant. A new age of transportation dawns."
The Prototyping building was four stories tall and nicely lined by windows, and similar to the others constructed entirely of red brick with tan sandstone quoin work on the corners. Inside was a short corridor which opened to a side gallery of drafting tables, table at which dozens of men were hard at work pouring over drawings. A small green think skittered through the door, so fast I barely caught its passing. Parsons had been taking me down the center but saw my distraction. "Our draftsmen, Mr. DeWitt. Mr. Howard is their supervisor." Upon one of their angled tables, a slab of polished wood three five feet across by three feet high, I spied the clean lines of a tower.
A lighthouse.
The man stood and offered his hand. "James Howard. A pleasure, Sir."
"Booker DeWitt." I answered, still more focused upon the drawings than the person. I caught myself and met his gaze. "What are they working on, if you don't mind me asking?" My empty hand slipped pocket to hip, and in his grasp, I felt the pain beneath the bandage. Columbia had been but three weeks ago. It seemed like forever.
"The North Resonator." Howard informed, scratching his razor stubble. "To be the grandest aerial of them all and our first commercial plant here in the States...commissioned by no less than Mr. Morgan himself. Now that we have proven connectivity and power transmissivity without doubt and commercial operations are at hand, all that matters is to scale up."
"Mr. Morgan? Scale up? And why along the sea?" I asked, thinking back to the crash of waves and Elizabeth who had been with me. A billion versions of this beacon flashed through my waking mind.
"Are you quite all right, Mr. DeWitt?" Howard asked, and I realized my misgivings had colored my expression. I saw both him and Parsons glancing at my bandage.
"Uh, fine..." I shook the pain off. "A little injury from a couple of weeks ago."
"You asked about Mr. Morgan." Parsons answered. "He is in fact our main backer, although there are others such as Mr. Astor and Mr. Westinghouse. The answer to your second question is, for reasons known only to Tesla's cabal, unfortunately not to lowly bludgeons like me. All I know is that the original impetus with which this scheme was sold was upon the idea of wireless, that is, to flash stock market reports and information worldwide...even conversations by voice. Now that the transmission of power is a reality, all that remains is for Mr. Tesla and the New York Cartel to figure out where to place the meter."
"The meter?"
"The power meter, Mr. DeWitt. For billing." Parsons smirked. "Our benefactors are quite keen on that one."
"Oh." Money…it always came down to money.
We said goodbye to Howard and passed into a crafting shop, wherein men were working with clay and shaving out originals for what I presumed to be molds. A scale of the Lighthouse stood at the center of the room upon a Dias, ten feet tall and in rendered in fabulous detail. Unlike the tower outside which was but a wooden framework, this octagonal ziggurat was, by the tiny human figures at its scaled doors and multitude of elegant glass windows upon its sides, at least twenty stories tall...every bit as tall as the tower if not more. About its lower extents it was washed in white, windows trimmed in gold, about its top third a black ring beneath the golden dome. The dome itself was pocked evenly with small hemispherical blisters.
It was déjà vu.
"This building is one that you will be paying a considerable bit of attention to in the night rounds." He pointed to a vertical safe pressed against the brickwork. "All of the primary drawings are set into security for the night, then withdrawn by handbill for the day's work. This is very important, for Mr. Tesla has only recently discovered interest in patents and his attorneys are busy in harried nights protecting one by one his discoveries. However, many yet remain unprotected. Therefore, secrecy is paramount."
I was still thinking about the Lighthouse when we stepped out into the compound anew, pointing across to the west. "That building over there is our materials warehouse and commercial receiving point. Parts and main components are delivered either by train or truck at the loading docks out back. There is a short rail spur to the west that leads to it also." Motioning ahead, he pointed to the taller building backed outside the compound walls by what I could now see as a mound of black. "That's the alternator house where our power is produced." We continued to walk until he approached the open doors.
Inside two large boilers were running, the source of the plume of black smoke rising into the sky above. "This is Arliegh Burgess, our plant foreman. "Arliegh, Mr. Booker DeWitt, our new gateman."
"Pleasure to meet you, DeWitt." The gray-haired man said. Portly, but not obese, Burgess had dungarees on and a thin blue striped shirt beneath, his sleeves rolled up much like his similarly gray mustache. Brown eyes lingered upon me beneath his railroad engineer's cap.
Out of courtesy, I reached out and shook his hand. "Tell him about the plant, Arleigh."
Burgess crossed his arms, looking back at the two shirtless lads hopping coal into one of the open boiler furnaces. "Four 1000 kW Westinghouse alternators..." The man said, obviously proud. It wasn't a railroad engine but neither again did the man have to travel, I supposed. "They power the entire compound system including the Resonator. Back behind them with the big vents, them's sixteen large oil-filled transformers...that's our high voltage supply. The tanks about us on the walls, those are steel and house the condensers. The other boxes contain the regulating coils."
This was all so much gibberish to me, but I nodded like I knew what they were talking about anyway. As the day before, the noise within the building was terrific. "We've been running power transmission during the day and messaging at night for night on two years now. I ain't no Tesla, but I hear 'em sayin' it works best that way. Only problem is the neighbors, but we'll be done with and able to broadcast daytime when the new plant opens up in six months."
"Six months?" I asked. "You mean the one on the shore?"
Looking to Parsons, Arleigh glanced back to me and nodded. "Seen it, eh? Well, yes. Turns out we need considerable cooling for what we're going to be doing and the sea will give it to us. Something else too, something about the ocean being a resonator, but like I said, I ain't no scientist."
"Thank you, Arleigh. I just wanted you to know that if you see Mr. DeWitt around, he's new on the payroll. Strong background with the military and Pinkerton, though, so you'll be in good hands."
"Good." He said, looking me in the eye with gray intent…or was it suspicion? "Make sure you keep those damned kids off the concrete down by the beach. Every time I go down to the site the pads we've just poured have them initials and such on them."
As we departed his colliers looked up and I wondered if they knew something of the matter. The engineer turned back to them and they resumed shoveling. We headed across the yard diagonal where he showed me the warehouses he'd pointed out before. "How'd you know about the Pinkertons?" I asked as we entered.
"I have friends in the City still. I was able to find a few rudimentary items out about you. I trust we'll have no issues here such as you encountered there?"
"No."
"This is where we store our components." Inside long shelves were lined with crates, some open and showing turbines and dynamos and coils of electrical cable. Mostly however the shelves were filled with iron pipework. Racks of it. Ahead a manager looked at us as a horse drawn wagon was being loaded with the stuff.
"What's that?" I asked. Parsons looked at the long pipes, each eight inches in diameter and solid, delivering me a smug smile. He shrugged. "All that I know is that it goes underground."
"Underground?"
"Yes, Mr. DeWitt. I know this might be surprising, but much as are you and your ward, Wardenclyffe is an iceberg. He paused for effect before looking into my eyes and handing me a truncheon...the bulk of what happens here one can only dimly see."
#
"Uh, Miss Comstock..." Joseph interrupted from the seat beside me, concern written upon his brow. "Are you certain you want to do that?"
Upward I looked from beside him, kneeling on the laboratory floor in the green skirt Booker had purchased for me a week before, boot toes askew upon the concrete and finding my ensemble every bit as uncomfortable as ever. Though the air of the spinning fans above made the Bunker's air perhaps not so stifling, it was rather hard upon the knees.
"I don't see why I should not." As I batted the heavy blouse's ruffles away, I cocked my head and smirked, brushing my hair aside as perspiration trickled down the tight neck. With gloved fingertips I detached, tie by tie, a roasted eighth-inch gauge insulated copper wire along the Tear Machine's left brace. A pout touched my lips. "It's not holding current."
"But we checked it on the voltmeter the other day and it was." Jospeph protested, drawing the gaze of one of the scientists, Harvey Meyer, I'd heard him called. He turned from where he was slaving away over a relay at the workbench. Joseph Randall was a smallish man, at least compared to Booker…who was my yardstick. He was slim and dark-haired as Tesla but round of face, of gentle demeanor but, as I'd found over the last two days, somewhat obstinate. He'd studied the discipline of Electromagnetics and power at some place called Princeton for several years before working for someone named Edison and seemed to worship Tesla like the scientists who'd worked on me had worshiped my "Father."
I plucked the remainder of the wire aside and threw it across atop the smooth oaken surface of the nearby workbench, casting as I did a little smirk his way. "Then you did a poor job."
Behind him Harvey chuckled, and Joseph seemed less than amused by my tease. I decided to speak less and work more. With the wire removed and discarded I stood and bit my lower lip, thumb to chin as I examined the contraption, a big "U" with a flattened half sphere with cylinders about it suspended amidst its twin "I" beams. Beside me Joseph sighed and poured again over the 'Book,' as they called it, open to Lutece's Chapter 12 on 'manifold dimensional sheaths.' At its side lay a loose set of diagrams on drafting paper, delicate and brittle and probably dating from the time of the Pharaohs.
"Can you make out what that circuit connects to?" I asked, attending his side, my gloved fingertip tracing a wire from a grounding point. He glanced to it and it dawned upon me that perhaps he'd never worked with a woman before. At least in such intimate proximity. It was an awkward feeling, for the feeling was mutual… aside from Booker I'd never worked with a man...let alone men.
"Do you mind me asking a question, Miss Comstock?" He said, gaze hovering on my gloved appendage.
"Not if you don't mind getting an unwelcome answer." I giggled, deciding I was flirting.
"Where did you get your education?" He said, turning to me with a mixture of consternation and awe in his voice. Beside him Alfie continued working on the voltage regulator we'd earlier pulled and identified as damaged, removing its melted solenoid with what appeared to be with silvered watchmaker's tools. Upon the workbench lay Ryan's replacement part.
"I was home schooled." I answered somberly, the question not being the one I'd hoped for. Consulting the drawings as I spoke, I leaned back a little more before going back to my trouble shooting. Once more I hooked little black and red clips from my breadbox-sized meter, powered what should have been a circuit and checked its continuity. I was doing electrical engineering. Elizabeth's Electrical Engineering.
Triple E.
"I had tutors though, and I was quite keen at academic pursuits such as puzzles and cryptography. And this machine, particularly with its diagrams you have so helpfully supplied...it is precisely that. A simple puzzle to be put back in order. It is mostly there already."
"This is not a 'simple machine.'" Meyer protested, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow with a drawn handkerchief.
Beside him roughly shaven Alfie closed the little black boxes cover. "Got it...new solenoid is in. Might you bring the meter, my Dear?"
I turned to the Machine and detached the box, hefting it with effort back onto the worktable. "I believe it is ready to be hooked up." My arrival drew both Peters' and Meyer's attention.
As Peters did connected the thing, Randall shook his head. "How on earth do you...understand this?"
I paused, looking over Alfred's progress before looking back to him. In my hand I cradled my fingertip. My brow furrowed. "I...find that hard to describe, Mr. Randall." Beside him I took a seat on a stool, clasped by hand my knees together and met his eyes, feeling the air of the fans cool upon a damp face. "As I told you, I had a sheltered youth and considerable time on my hands, and with that time I read a great number of books. I did other things also, but reading was my pastime and I..." He would never understand, but I had to try. "I could read a book and visualize it rather clearly. In fact..." I reached to Lutece's tome and hefted it both hands into my lap. "I can just read and for the most part understand, not always, but with many things like this..." I saw his eyes just staring. "Do...do you think me a freak for that?" For that instant I'd felt ashamed…my words had come out rather pathetically. He looked at me with such sympathy I felt even more ashamed for teasing him earlier. I had known full well the wire worked...mostly...but for the little break two thirds of the way that closed only completely with the application of power and therefore heat. And the poor man could have never known that...not without a fingertip missing.
"No, of course not." He answered. "Please forgive me, but I have considered myself, Harvey and Alfred here...foremost in our field yet with this matter we have been completely bedeviled. Our understanding of the...this 'Tear Machine' was so incomplete...we had spent months building it up, replacing components blindly by the drawings without truly understanding what we were doing. Only Mr. Tesla seems to understand its workings, and he has been far too busy to assist us until of late."
"And still it burned in the night." Meyer added. "Even Mr. Tesla had no idea what we'd done wrong."
"How does this machine relate to the book?" Joseph asked, just a hint of surrender in his voice. "We've tried to make a connection for months between the diagrams and the text, but there seems to be no confluence. Yet the other night you appear and illuminate precisely what we have struggled to understand. And precisely when we'd reached an impasse we thought we could not overcome. Who trained you? Please, we shall tell no one."
'Please' was a nice word and I hated to lie. I fidgeted and bit my lip, eyes turned upward in thought. "I...think you're really wondering why you couldn't make the connection yourself, when really you had simply been looking at this with the wrong perspective."
"Wrong perspective? How is that?" Alfie asked, joining his associates in bewilderment. He handed me the refurbished voltage regulator and I turned to the Machine, hooked it up where it obviously went, finding it with the meter to hold current better than the poor little wire earlier.
"The book is only related to the machine in the way that theory allows...it predicts an outcome, the compaction and superposition of branes...not how to build the machine that does it. Whoever built the machine was obviously attuned to the outcome they desired, and Mister Tesla is aware of that fact. Another way of saying it might be that the construction and function of this device..." I looked the contraption over. "Has nothing to do with Quantum Mechanics, but Quantum Mechanics...the Lutece Mechanics, you'd say, has everything to do with what happens when you use it."
"You power the machine and the field it creates compacts the folds." Alfie said.
"The branes." I corrected. How do you tell someone something you know from experience but cannot prove? "But for this to occur, the field strength must be extraordinary. What we call 'fields' are simply straight lines, or paths of least resistance, in higher dimensions, you know." By the look on their faces, they did not. "And there is a reason, I am certain, that this mysterious benefactor of yours had entrusted your employer to fix it. Should he have continued as he is doing, I've no doubt Mister Tesla would have stumbled across the effect by accident in his own endeavors within a few years...and the stumbling would have been its discovery."
"The 'effect'?" Joseph said.
I looked down at my fingers numbly, the glove concealing my shortened disfigurement. "Tears. What your employer is playing with here...the tower, his transmission of power...the geometries are all that matter. Have you not seen that these two spheres here..." I pointed green gloved fingertip to the two spheres. "And the central bulb with its surround of capacitor banks...have you not seen how similar it is to your tower?"
By their blank expression they hadn't. How had I? I closed my eyes, wishing Booker were here to tell me I was not some circus freak. "Maybe..." I said, glancing back to the now wireless I-beam. "We should get back to work on those wiring harnesses?"
#
Outside the hour had drawn late, the sun dimming through the frosted white of the outward-swung window louvers above. With the coming of evening and one-by-one departure of Tesla's technicians, it had gotten cooler and quiet in the cellar. At some point, quite unconsciously and out of a sense of loneliness, I had taken to humming…then singing, softly and to myself. Along the opposite workbenches the men and their seconds had been reassembling those new wire bundles, necessary to provide power to the fresh array of components Ryan had provided. I, on the other hand, was reading up on electromagnets and windings for motors. If they had been bothered by my quiet melody, none seemed to complain.
"Are you going to remain here all night?" Randall asked, interrupting my chorus. Having donned his vest and tie, brown jacket atop it, I realized he was preparing to depart, and the others already had. I was soon to be alone in the Bunker.
I felt myself blush…my hand rose to my chest. "Oh, I'm so embarrassed, Mr. Randall. I certainly hope…hope I wasn't bothering you?"
"Bothering me?" Joseph grinned, looking at me with a great deal of appreciation. "Quite the contrary, my Dear. I have now had the pleasure of engineering with angels. And what is lady seraph working on now?"
'Angels?' I'd not thought that someone would enjoy my idle melody such so, and his obvious approval caused me to blush. "I…I am still reading on the manufacture of coil windings. It seems to be somewhat of an arcane art." I put the book back onto the desk, page open and bookmarked with a white feather I had found on the floor.
"You have been a great help over the last two days, Miss Comstock. Amazingly so, and, I must say, charming company. I am sorry that Mr. Tesla has requested that you not be left alone with the machine."
"So..." I said with a little smirk, closing the cover of the tome before me. "This is your way of asking me to go home?"
"That shall not be necessary, Mr. Randall. I am here." Joseph had, of course, about to say yes. In surprise he instead glanced to the steps, finding there Tesla himself, sitting with legs spread, hands draped lankily over knees. "And shall be for another hour or so. I was hoping to talk to the young Lady concerning matters at hand." His eyes turned from Randall to the contraption, sitting like an arcane sculpture in the center of the chamber, wiring undone, boxes open. "I can see you are making progress."
"Indeed, we are, Sir." Joseph said, approaching Tesla hat in hand. "Significant progress."
"We found several fused components today, Sir." I seconded, standing before my stool and brushing my skirt down. "Mr. Peters was able to diagnose three wiring bundles as the culprits behind the device's power issues along with a bad voltage regulator."
"To be fair, Sir, Miss Elizabeth had a hand in that too, Sir."
"Yes. I suppose she did." Tesla said, blue eyes inspecting me. Even in repose his countenance was intent…like that of a hawk. "Will you be in at nine tomorrow, Joseph?"
"Yes, Mister Tesla. I shall." Seeing our connection, Joseph placed hat upon head and tipped it. "I shall take my leave, then, Sir."
Tesla rose and smiled. Ascending the steps, Joseph offered the man a handshake and got a hug in return. "Be confident in your capabilities. You would not be here were I not."
"Thank you, Sir." Joseph answered, the man's confidence in him giving the scientist a little boost of ego. Glancing downward toward me. Joseph smiled and with a tip of hat, departed, leaving Tesla and myself alone.
"Good evening." I said, only slightly nervous. Where he stood upon the concrete stairs, Tesla held crossed arms.
"And how are you settling in, Miss Comstock?" He asked, descending step by step until he alighted on the hard concrete. With the sun failing through the louver slats, the handful of lightbulbs strung above provided now the greater illumination. The man before me was as much of a mystery as his facility.
"I believe…I believe I am doing well. I seem to find my way around the campus and the books you have are more than adequate. Some sublime." He had approached slowly, hair slicked back, that thin face of his inscrutable but unconventionally handsome. And rather close. "I had, I must confess, wondered when you might…might come by."
"I have wanted to come by since you arrived." His eyes turned toward the machine. "I did not think you would...have so quickly commenced the replacement of parts and wiring. Joseph and Peters and Meyer, after the debacle of the Fourth they had been unwilling to take any chance at all. There was...is...twenty thousand dollars tied up in this foray."
"Twenty thousand dollars?" I whispered, amazed. My hand found my chest. "I...I didn't realize..."
"That this endeavor was so extraordinarily expensive? Those capacitors you so blithely commented on the other night...Mr. Ryan does not sell them on the cheap." Before me he came to a halt, looking my studies over. "Nor the resonance dome and its windings you are reading about. You have been working since early morning...not fitting for a young lady's endurance."
I found his thought odd, for to me it had seemed the day had flown. " Sir, I am used to long hours." Long and lonely ones, I sighed. "You…know of our progress on the machine?"
"I do." He ran his fingertip along the rig, paused to peer at some of my latest work on the wiring. "Joseph and Alfred and myself, at least to a degree. Harvey somewhat less. The wiring we could replace, the components...what we could not understand was why it burned."
"It does seem a mystery, does it not?" I glanced back towards the machine, following his attention. "Almost as if it had been powered completely in its unsuitable state."
Tesla smirked. "Yes…the question is by who, and for what purpose? Sabotage…that is all I can posture." His eyes narrowed, taking my perspiring form in. "As I was shuttering the windows, I do believe I heard someone singing down here? It certainly was not Joseph.
"You…did." I said with renewed discomfiture. "I…I used hum…sing when I was alone. Most of the time, it was all I had to keep myself company."
"To keep yourself company?"
The vast emptiness of my tower ached in my heart. It was never far away. "I…had a lot of time upon my hands when…when I was younger."
"I cannot say it was unpleasant to the ears, Miss DeWitt…quite the contrary. I heard you from outside, though vaguely. The song...what is its name, might I ask? I do not believe I have heard it before. Was it Italian?"
"Italian? I…don't…it's just a little song I made up when I was a girl." As I spoke, I knew my eyes were distant, lost amid ephemeral prison walls of books. Seeing again through glass a panorama clouds I could never touch nor feel. Imprisoned within a fortress of solitude. Only after a moment did I realize what he'd said, and by then it was too late. I looked up mortified.
Tesla smirked, arms once more crossed in obvious vindication. "I think it a good pretense, though I do not know precisely why you keep it. DeWitt seems a good man, and you obviously have connection. Is he your father?"
I did not answer.
Nikola was respectful enough not to press. Rebuffed in his inquiry, he turned to the machine, placed his hand upon it. "This...mystery. I find it uncanny that, at the very moment of our greatest frustration, you should appear, a woman no less. I ask myself how is that but then say, it is of no matter Nikola, after all these years God has sent a miracle to help you." He was studying the machine now, its braces and bulbs, the cables burnt upon its sides. "I had feared that our excesses...my excesses in pursuit of this device...were coming up empty, particularly after the fire. There have been many times when our backers…backer, have nearly pulled the plug on my affairs. Now I have hope." Tesla turned back to me and approached, looking at my blouse and into my eyes. Gently his placed his hand upon my upper arm. "I know we have only just met, but as a token of the esteem I already have for you, indeed, astonishment...I would like to invite you to a social affair this Saturday evening. Mr. Morgan is holding a dinner at his new villa, and I would like you to attend. Along with your 'guardian,' of course."
"Mr. Morgan?" I realized then that not only was I unprepared for a social turn of events but had little to wear…and nothing of station.
"Yes...hardly any mystery if you read the papers." Tesla said. "The only condition is that you and Mr. DeWitt shall have to accouter yourselves formally."
I looked down, despondent. "Mr. Tesla, we...we have not the money."
He tipped my chin upward to meet his gaze and smiled. "Well, something must be done to fix that. Tomorrow evening we shall work one more, but in the morning you shall go into New York to the Ladies' Mile and find something to wear...something, um, spectacular. Take, err, Mr. DeWitt with you, as he shall also attend and requires a similar fitting. A tuxedo, white gloves and top hat shall do for him. Mr. Elliott shall provide you with an account that you may draw upon."
I worried suddenly this charity too much. "You…shouldn't." I said, shaking my head. "I've hardly even begun to work for you, we've no successes to trumpet as of yet...how do you know..."
With the touch of his index finger he stilled my lips. "No successes?" He laughed. "This is not payment, my Dear! Aside from the application of your...knowledge...to help correct my oversights, you have a part to play in securing out financial liquidity. This is an act…an act of showmanship. Salesmanship. There have been questions about the veracity of my research….now, with you, my lovely savant, I not only have answers but the face to sell them. I intend to introduce you to my patrons and set things right with the understanding that...understanding has finally arrived. I shall arrange for Katharine to meet you at Lord and Taylor. This is of unparalleled importance."
"Katharine?" My brow furrowed at a woman's name.
"Katharine Johnson." Tesla smiled, basking the name as he spoke it. "A dearest friend of mine…perhaps dearest of all. I trust her…in my affairs…implicitly, particularly those of dress and societal nature. Morgan's Gala should be right up her alley."
"Gala? Mr. Tesla, where might I ask is this…'gala,' to be?" Mr. DeWitt…he would want to know." And, I suspected, hate the thought.
"Not far away...Mr. Morgan's house in Manhattan."
"Mr. Morgan's house? Man….Manhattan?" I digested his words and my heart sank. Booker would despise this. Being alone, I especially felt his eyes. Since we'd been alone together, they'd not once left mine. "You have something else you wish…wish to ask me?"
"You are very perceptive, my Lady." From beside me he slipped to the workbench, removing the tracing paper drawings from Rosalind's book before closing its cover. Heavy and blue he held the thing before him, cradling it as he approached, eyes the same color as its cover.
"The other night, you said you read this book as a young girl…fell in love with it." Ever anxious, I fidgeted and looked briefly away, wishing Booker present. He glanced about, as if to ensure no one else might overhear. "You articulated the basic principles extoled within despite having never turned a page, to a precision unfathomable. You came to my laboratory uninvited, to find a place and experiment no one could possibly know existed, from this 'laboratory' of yours…one I doubt exists for surely, I would have heard of it. And based upon nothing less than stunning insight you have exhibited over the last two days, no one can doubt that your knowledge and story have merit…never have I met one so extraordinarily gifted in the understanding of this science. I have only one question."
Those eyes looked at me with piercing intensity.
"How on Earth is that possible when the book is not of this world?"