Carter Beats the Devil (55 page)

“Yes,” she smiled, “I guess maybe you could be a complete charlatan.”

He smiled at her. He touched her on the wrist. It was a sweet gesture, one even the Spider had trouble hating, but hate it he did. He touched the butt of his pistol.

Philo turned the wooden cabinet that held the body of his working television box toward the audience. It was a flat-matte white.

“This will take several seconds to warm up,” he announced. “Can we turn off the lights?”

This command caused the Spider to sit upright, as he could no longer see his contact, or his target. His fingers closed around the handle of the pistol, in its leather holster.

With the lights out, the audience rustled and adjusted. Ledocq closed his eyes. James listened to the sound of rain pelleting against the skylights far above. He called out, “Mr. Farnsworth?”

“Yes?”

“What uses do you project for television?”

“Yes, good question.” His voice came through the darkened auditorium while the screen began to turn a deep blue. “First and foremost, it will be a medium of education. I suppose it could be used for entertainment, as well, but primarily, it will bring the world closer together, I believe.”

“Thank you,” James said, and sat back.

No one asked further questions as the screen glowed brighter, and when Philo spoke again, James anticipated he would describe what they were going to see. He was wrong. Perhaps it was the dark, and the sound of rain, and the attendant feeling of safety, or perhaps the excitement of having more than a hundred people hear for the first time what he had only hinted to President Harding, but Philo continued answering the question in a way he hadn’t intended on revealing. “It will end war.” He said this shyly. It was as if he hadn’t spoken at all until a phantom voice from the front said, coarsely, “Say that again.”

Philo squinted. “Did someone just ask me to repeat that?”

“Yes,” said the Spider, who couldn’t believe his ears.

“This is about keeping world peace. Forever. We set up captive balloons to carry the transmission signals around the globe,” he said with conviction. “And if someone in Berkeley, California, could sit in his house and see a man from Berlin, Germany, and how he eats his breakfast,” he swallowed, “how could they kill each other, then?”

There was no direct response, just an elaborate, embarrassed silence, as if he’d cut his promising presentation short to give a speech on the virtues of temperance. Ledocq leaned over to James. “It’s becoming clear,” he hissed.

“How much will you charge licensees to use it?” Someone else yelled out.

“Oh, that’s the beauty of it. It’s going to be free.”

Had there been crickets in the auditorium, crickets would have been heard. “Did you say
free
?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. I’m not going to sell television. Something like this should be given away, like schooling.”

The sounds of a hundred necks rubbing against a hundred collars as people turned to their neighbors to check if they’d heard correctly. “But if you’re not selling it—”

“It should be in the public domain. I’m asking for your help, so corporations can split the cost of development. It will be a boon—” he hesitated.

The room found its voice then, a discontented rumble that seemed to build to laughter. James could hear the words
charity case
echoing around.

“Clearer and clearer,” Ledocq said into James’s ear. James nodded. An idealist with a device that he believed could end war? One that he wouldn’t sell, but would only give away? Reason enough to kill him. However, ten rows ahead, the Spider, who was also an idealist, and intelligent, had mentally unloaded the bullets from his revolver. He began to look with awful eyes for his contact, with whom he wished to have a violent quarrel.

“People will settle their differences around a conference table instead of—” And then Philo heard gasps. He turned around and saw the television screen, where the first image he’d prepared, the horse, was frozen. He hadn’t been able to get a moving image since the evening with Pem, the gadget was still that finicky, but still, a horse that didn’t move was at least something. He hadn’t finished his sentence, but no one asked him to continue.

He wondered if that was because they all were ready to leave, but as he surveyed the crowd, he began to feel something prickly and wonderful happening to his skin. Horripilation. The mood had shifted, just like that, to sheer awe.

But was that enough to get funding? Was the beauty of television such that it could make capitalists want to help the public and the poor? He looked at the audience, row after row of dark shapes bathed in a blue light. They were a group of kin in a cave around something that glowed warm while, outside, the storm beat down like kettledrums. He remembered Pem saying she was so happy she wanted to stop time, and how he’d foolishly given her all the reasons you couldn’t do that. Now he knew what she meant.

Two seconds, three seconds.

He had a good gag prepared precisely for the type of man who’d asked
when they would see money in all this. It was a slide with a picture of a dollar bill.

“Pem,” he said. He decided to introduce her, “Pem is Mrs. Farnsworth. Pem, would you change the image, please?”

Five seconds, six.

Off came the horse. The screen went white.

“Philo, is this—” she said, then “Oh!”

He turned, feeling annoyed that he might miss the audience’s reaction to the next slide. He saw an arc, a jagged blue arc of electricity over the anode finger, that wasn’t supposed to happen, and a flash so bright it turned everything in Philo’s view black and white. Pem contorted, her hair on end. Then spots before his eyes. A heavy thump, like a flour sack hitting the floor. His eyes smarted. It had gone as fast as the flash of a photographer’s lightbulb, and it left a similar smell of ignited resins. His television apparatus was on fire.

“Pem?”

And now everything went so slowly he wondered if he were dreaming. Shouts. His eyes dazzled, he felt around the floor in perfect blackness for his wife.

“Pem?”

That awful smell of things burning, he looked on the tabletop to confirm it was only his invention, then back to the floor, the lights went on. People rushed up to help him.

“Put out the fire,” someone yelled, and someone else was reaching for the pitcher of water. Philo was crouched over Pem, patting her hand. She was looking at him through singed eyebrows, before he realized he had to turn and scream, “No!”

But it was too late. Whoever it was meant well, pouring the water on the flames, but since they were fed by potassium and sodium, what had been a small sizzle of wires and rubber roared into a conflagration that consumed every scrap of metal, every hand-wound coil, and forced people to leap backward as others, thinking quickly, used the cotton sheets to bat at the showers of sparks. A faint popping sound, then the collapse of broken glass as the vacuum tube went out. Impossible to build, and now it was gone.

More things happened to him in those early minutes—people fetching help, a blanket covering Pem, anonymous trouser legs surrounding him, awkward stares, whispers. He hardly noticed. Instead, one image was forever etched into his memory: the flash, with Pem in agony. He had wanted time to stop, and there it was.

In all, Philo’s television had been demonstrated for eight seconds, and burned for thirty.

He huddled by his fallen wife.

Finally, her lips moved. “Philo,” she said silently. He nodded. He held her hand. And he sat like that, legs folded under himself, returning the feeble squeezes she gave with her hand, barely even blinking himself, until the ambulance came.

CHAPTER 24

Hollis, O’Brien, and Stutz were singing a different kind of harmony now, all of them yelling frantically, jumping and waving at the boat that was settling into the berth, regardless of their screaming, as if it belonged there. Samuelson, however, stood back—Carter was either going to drown or be crushed to death—he couldn’t decide whether it mattered which way he went. The tuna boat, as it approached, slowed, and two mates jumped off its sides, ropes in hand.

“Back off!” O’Brien yelled.

“You back off, chum!” returned one of the fishermen.

As the boat continued to ease inward, the crate bounced off its bow and then rolled along its side, corners catching as it spun lazily toward the starboard side.

“There’s a man in the crate!” Stutz yelled.

“Eh, piss off,” said a sailor.

The agents gathered together, Hollis carrying crowbars in his arms, all of them watching helplessly as the crate was scraped between the concrete pilings and the tuna boat’s hull. It was like a pair of jaws coming down on a peanut shell. The crate burst, sending up splinters and beads of water.

“No!” Stutz yelled.

“Did he get out?” O’Brien craned his neck.

Samuelson shook his head, curiously pleased, watching air bubbles and movement where the crate had been, then he said, “He’s right there,” and pointed, heart thumping, to something drifting up to the surface.

It was the mail sack, a hump of air making it float like a dead jellyfish. Samuelson couldn’t tell if Carter were still in it, and if so, if he were alive. The boat’s crew had unloaded their haul, using the port side, so the agents were unmolested as they gathered around the sack.

Hollis had the idea of poking it with a crowbar, but the dock was a good ten feet above the water’s surface. There was a rope ladder, though.

“Go check,” Samuelson directed.

The rain continued, and Hollis looked at the sack, the rope ladder, and his still-dry group leader, for just long enough to appear sullen. He stepped off the side of the dock, found the upper rungs of the ladder, and began to descend toward the white canvas. He had the crowbar tucked under his belt.

The three men remaining on the dock crouched carefully, as the planks felt dangerous and wobbly. In addition to the deliberately missing slats, some were broken or ready to yield; when Oakland successfully collected port fees, they never wasted money on upkeep.

Hollis went down to the end of the ladder. The sack was too far away to touch. He pulled the crowbar from his belt.

Above, Samuelson yelled, “What do you see, Hollis?”

“I don’t see anything down here. I’m going to see if I can get it.”

“Hollis?” The three men were all crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, trying to see over the edge of the dock. A gust of wind made Samuelson’s hand clench around the shaft of his umbrella.

“Hollis, where are you?” O’Brien sounded annoyed.

“Hey, get off,” Stutz said faintly, further complaint dying on his lips as he realized none of his companions had touched him. His gaze traveled from the edge of the dock to his shoe, where he saw unlikely movement: a hand between the dock slats. “Hey!” He leapt backward, constricted by something, and in a blind panic leaped again, landing on his tailbone and bowling over O’Brien, whom he hadn’t touched.

He saw fat water droplets gathering on the links that cuffed his right leg to O’Brien’s left.

“Sam!” he yelled, pointing. O’Brien was struggling upright and Stutz, too, hurried to his feet. Stutz pointed at the cuffs in a panic, “I saw a hand! I saw a hand!”

And, indeed, Carter was just below them, clinging to the dock’s rotting underside, on the kneebrace where the wooden joints came together. His clothes were ruined with mud and bay dreck. He had kicked out the underside of the crate seconds before it was crushed, and, propelled past a point where he could count the ways in which he hurt, he moved primally now, feeling the anger he had never in his life followed as far as he could.

He’d never punched anyone in his life. His hands were too valuable for that. But now he wanted to hit them all, hit them hard. He expected
them to run, which they did, but their panic was so complete they wasted several seconds choosing a direction, and Carter saw the chain above him flashing within reach. If he grabbed it, he could cuff it to one of the iron rings sticking out from the dock itself. With them held still, he would beat them senseless using whatever was handy.

He grabbed the chain and jumped off his shelf so his full weight brought the links down with him, like a conductor signaling a freight train’s full stop; above him his plan went awry immediately, for Stutz and O’Brien crashed against each other, and then the plank beneath them gave way and they fell through the dock.

Carter let out a gargling sound as the chain flew from his hands, and he fell backward into the water again and disappeared almost without leaving a ripple. The men who were cuffed together had the misfortune of falling several feet apart, among broken lumber and nails, on either side of a cross-beam that was unusually sturdy, and so their bodies no longer fell
down
but swung
inward
in an arc terminating when the backs of their skulls collided.

Samuelson walked backward two steps from the huge gash where his men had been pulled through. Walking backward was a terrible idea, as the magician could drop him, so he turned around and walked into the rain, toward the truck. He was alone. Hollis? Under the pier somewhere. The wind had kicked up, so he brought his umbrella down. This obscured his vision, which seemed like another bad idea, so he brought it back up again, behind him, and kept walking stubbornly over the gaps between planks. He expected hands to come out, or Carter to leap over the side, or to come up behind him, so as he walked he made full 360-degree twirls.

The umbrella was holding him back. He dropped it and ran, batting his pockets for the truck keys. He was just steps away from where Hollis had parked it. Missing Hollis. Who had the keys.

So he reached for his holster at the same time that he saw something drop behind the truck, landing with a clatter. Crowbar. His fingers made it to the leather strap buttoned over his pistol butt. Then he was tapped on the shoulder. He turned, drawing his gun, and something huge flared in his face. His umbrella, unfolding, made him stumble and, more quickly than Samuelson’s eye could follow, the umbrella retracted, showing off Carter, who ran the hook end down his gun arm like scraping ice off a window. The gun dropped to the dock, clattered across a plank, then into the bay. Samuelson looked up as the umbrella handle swung into his face.