Tesla's Signal (21 page)

“The devil with a normal life. Get up here before the cops arrest you for trespassing.”

“They'll never find me. I know these conduits by heart. I dug them myself, when I worked for Edison.”

“Well well, I'm so impressed. You're a man of many talents. I think I'll just rest here awhile.” She sat down and began singing softly.
“Oy, a nakht a sheine...”
 

He didn't understand all the Yiddish words but he caught the drift: a couple sat on a bench on a beautiful moonlit night. They talked for a long time but could not resolve their problems.
We cannot marry but / I swear that I will never forget you / until the day of my death.
 

Niko had never heard Clara sing before. He wanted to listen forever. And yet the more his feelings grew for her...the more important it was for her to go away.

He did not want
Them
to get her!

“Niko, you're being an ass,” Clara finally said. “I have better things to do than sit here on my
tuchis
. When you come to your senses, look me up at Lowe's Metal Works, 101 Essex Street. Everyone knows where it is.”

After she went away Niko just sat there stunned.
Clara left me!
 

It was the most wretched moment of his entire life. Worse than the day he had been forced to hire on to a ditch-digging crew for a living. Even worse than the day his other lab had burned, and he had contemplated jumping into the East River...

He sat up as if he'd been jabbed with a needle, remembering the day his lab had burned and young Clara had come to him. She had saved his notes, and his soul.

I just sent her away! What's wrong with me?

“Clara,” he cried, climbing up the ladder. For a second he didn't even care if
'They'
got him. Clara was the most important thing in the universe! He pushed the grate up, and emerged into the alley. “Come back! I'm sorry!”

But the alley was empty. Night had fallen, and a fog had rolled in from the East River. The cobblestones glistened with moisture.

His mind alternated between panic, numb resignation, and black despair. He climbed back down to the tunnel once more.

Now he had nobody left. Nowhere to go...no home, no family to whom he could turn.
Why not just stay here?
Maybe he would never come out. This could be his private kingdom: just him and the currents. He could see the waves spiraling out around the wires, a beautiful dance for him alone. When he waved his hands, the currents obeyed him. He could weave them, the way Mother had knitted woolen scarves.

Yes. Niko knew every node of the electrical grid that powered New York City. He felt a sudden urge to touch the shining current; take the life-giving stream of charged particles into himself.

He began to crawl through the conduit, instinctively drawn toward the Manhattan Substation. This station lay directly in line to Grand Central Station itself: New York City's beating heart, fed by the high voltage lines which brought the current from their origin point—the great Niagara generators that he had engineered a decade ago.

Time and space had no meaning for someone who was not a normal human, but a man of lightning. Night passed, the sun rose and a day passed, while Niko made his way through New York's electrical innards. In the darkness his eyes could see nothing...except the swirling lines of the electromagnetic fields.
So beautiful
. He had entered another world.

At last the conduit opened out to the generator room of the substation, which was housed in a great brick cavern just below street level. He emerged on a walkway. Here, fed by monstrous coal furnaces, sat a bank of massive electrical generators spinning out their glorious whirling fields. Niko stared like a hungry man, longing to touch the currents and be swept away with them.

He reached toward the glowing maelstrom, then stopped himself.

Leave it alone. You'll cause a power outage.

And why not
, he argued with himself.
I was the one who brought the gift of electric power to Mankind, and look how I have been rewarded.
 

It must be about 8 p.m. now. A few years ago, at this time of night Niko used to sit down at his private table at Delmonico's, to be surrounded by sparkling silverware, a stack of clean napkins, and a juicy steak medium rare.

Instead, I'm hiding like a rat in a sewer.

Niko had been almost godlike. People called him
Zeus.
 

The memory was a wedge that opened a crack. The bitter thoughts rushed in, and emotions that he always tried to suppress: his anger at the way the world had treated him. Others enjoyed life with families, loved ones. Niko had lived like a monk, laboring incessantly, sacrificing everything to give his scientific gifts to humanity. He had worked out the secrets of wireless and that fool Marconi had stolen it and won the world's adulation. J. P. pretended to support Nikola, then dropped him into the trash, shoveled derision on top of him, made him an outcast.

I could show them a thing or two.

Dark thoughts began to writhe like serpents. Someone—he could not recall who—had recently suggested that maybe Niko could get back at his enemies, and be avenged on a world that had discarded him. And that maybe he ought to be the one who ruled—the person who called the shots.

The idea grew inside him like a dark pulsing seed.

In merely a decade, New York was becoming all too dependent on abundant electricity. Buildings were growing taller; industry and commerce expanding rapidly. All the while consigning to oblivion the man who had made it all possible.

Humanity, let us see how you manage without my gifts!

He reached out like a thirsty man, closed his fist around the cables and drew the lightning into himself.
Give me all of it! Hundred thousand volts!
With ravenous ecstasy, he absorbed the current from a main supply line for Lower Manhattan. The abrupt change in current flow caused circuit breakers to trip, one after the other.

I gave you light. Now I give you...darkness!

Outside, the street went dark. Niko rushed out in time to see the cascading effect of the abrupt current shift. Three blocks were plunged into shadow—ten blocks. The string of lights along the river blinked out in quick succession. The trains ground to a halt. It was an eerie reversal of the day he had pulled the switch at Niagara and lit the world.

Blackout! I have stolen the light!

He knew more than any other how vulnerable the electrical grid was. A single defective relay might plunge half the city into darkness...until a clever engineer could fix it.
I was once that clever engineer,
Niko remembered. And now...and now....

A sudden switch flipped inside him.
Dear Lord, what have I done?
 

The exaltation of the currents collapsed as Niko realized what was happening to him. He had turned into a creature that lurked in the underworld. An
evil
creature
.

Villain! Put it back immediately!

He dashed back into the building and grasped the wires again. Gritting his teeth, he pushed the voltage back out of himself and twisted the electromagnetic fields until they flowed back the way they belonged. He found a bank of switches and threw them. Found a break in the vortex, forced it shut and wove it back together.
I'm sorry! I 'm not myself! I didn't mean to—
 

He dashed out of the station. Most of the lights were coming back on, he saw with relief. People walked about trying to figure out what had happened. “Must have been a short circuit at the power station. Glad it was over in just a few moments,” one said to another. “Scared the hell out of me. Hope they got it fixed.”

Niko stared at his hands in horror, realizing: the enemy he had been running from...that enemy was inside himself!
 

He had fixed it this time...but who knew what other mayhem he was capable of?

I've become a monster.

When Niko realized this, he knew there was only one thing to do. But how? Electricity only made the monster stronger. His mind turned over other options and quickly discarded them. At last he thought of the Brooklyn Bridge. Yes—that was the best way. The only way.

He broke into a run. This would have to be quick, before they caught him and he was forced into more evil acts.  

After ten blocks he caught sight of the massive bridge looming up in the fog. Two great towers rose above the East River. From their heights, thick cables dipped down in graceful arcs, supporting the bridge itself. Rows of lights, restored after the brief blackout, sparkled along the outlines of the bridge. Such a beautiful, famous structure would be the perfect place to carry out his plan.

He strode to the center of the bridge, to the place halfway between Manhattan and Brooklyn, then clambered off the pedestrian walkway and onto the train tracks. He didn't even think to count the ties as he picked his way across and climbed up on the railing.
Do it quickly.
The wind tore at his jacket and the East River flowed by, far below, waiting to claim him.

Do it...jump off!

A tremendous sound roared up all around him, like a chaos of wings. It must be the wind, rushing up as he fell. Something smashed against him: it must be his body hitting the water.  He must be already dead. A powerful voice called him.

>

If voices could have a shape and color, this voice would look like a glory of sunlight, fractalized into a prism of ever-increasing dimensions as more of the Aon cried out to him.

 

>

Alu took form as a huge, blazing collection of triangles: forceful, angry.

 

Niko cried.

The chorus called to him. Alu's angles softened. <
Let us help!>
 

His soul-cries echoed back and forth between the dimensions, as he struggled
with himself.

At last Niko returned to awareness and found himself hanging onto a thick cable, his feet kicking back and forth. Empty air whistled about him; the blackness of the East River stretched below.

A pigeon fluttered around his face, beating at him with her wings. A huge flock of other pigeons had followed her lead, flying into him, smashing their bodies against him, forming a tight, tremendous whirlwind around him.
They created an updraft...kept me from falling.
 

The awareness of his situation scared him into cold sanity.

His feet flailed about until they found the railing. Shaking, he managed to let himself down to the tracks.

What happened?
He must have instinctively grasped the cable as he had stepped off. But...the pigeons...
they saved my life. Why?
What caused a flock of birds to behave in such a manner?

The white pigeon settled on his shoulder. He remembered this one. “Alouette.”

Alouette glided in a graceful circle around his head. The flock settled along the bridge cables, like rows of sentinels, making gentle cooing sounds.

He looked up at the birds. They sat still, watching him with their dark shining eyes. The moon had broken through the clouds, and now he could see their silhouettes clearly: hundreds, maybe thousands of pigeons—perhaps directed by Alouette—to save his life.

At last the truth struck him.
Alouette is Alu
.

The Aon had found a way to come to Earth.
A gate to visit your world...a dimensional crossing...a
syma
—a compatible form in which I might manifest in the 3rd-d universe.
 

Or a way to manifest within a creature of Earth. And perhaps Alouette had led, or influenced, the entire flock of pigeons.

If this was true, then
nothing
was impossible! No wondrous fantasy, no mind-boggling impossibility was too strange to be real. It was like lifting up the cover of the normal world and finding an entirely new dimension beneath.
The Aon are
real
, and they can step between dimensions.