Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies (36 page)

You don't want to know.

Canfield's room was laid out exactly like Jack's. In fact, it could have been Jack's ... except it had no weird green crates lying about.

"Let's see now," Canfield said, grinning through his Hagar beard and motioning Jack to one of the chairs. "Where were we?"

He sat there snacking on fingernail and cuticle crudites as he regarded Jack with too-bright eyes. He seemed more wired up than usual. Salt-rimmed crescents darkened the armpits of his shirt.

"Yesterday you and I were in the 'Children of the Otherness' zone—inhabited by you and Melanie Ehler," Jack said. He settled into the chair, dropping to eye level with Canfield. "Later Roma said something about my supposedly being 'marked by the Otherness.'"

"Not supposedly—the mark is there and you know it."

You can see it too? Jack thought, stiffening. He shrugged with as much nonchalance as his tight muscles would allow.

"Do I?"

"Of course you do. Open your shirt and I'll prove it."

"Sorry. Not on a first date."

Canfield didn't laugh. "What's wrong? Does it disturb you that your scars might link you to me and my birth defects?"

Jack repressed a shudder as Canfield's legs stirred under the blanket.

"Whatever scars I have came along long after my birth. You told me yourself that your defects happened before you were born. I don't see any connection."

"Ah," Canfield said, raising a well-chewed index finger. "But what made your scars? A creature, right?"

Jack stared at him. He knows too? Finally he said, "Where do you get your information?"

"About the Otherness creatures?"

Why doesn't he call them by name? Jack wondered.

"Yeah. How do you know about them?"

"Melanie and I sensed their presence last year. Just as I sensed those scars on your chest, we became aware of the Otherness creatures approaching from the east."

That's right, Jack thought. The rakoshi had come from the east ... from India ... by freighter.

"I get the impression you never saw one."

"I never had the honor. We searched, but we never could locate them."

"Lucky for you."

"I don't see it that way. I could consider them almost ... brothers. After all, they too were children of the Otherness, like Melanie and me, although they contained far more of the Otherness than either of us."

"The Otherness ... I'm getting real tired of that word."

"Well, it's a perfect name, really. The Otherness represents everything that's not 'us'—meaning the human race and the reality we inhabit. Melanie thinks it's vampiric in a way, sucking the life—the spiritual life—out of everything it encounters. Monstrously dark times will ensue if and when it takes over."

"And how would it manage that?"

"Sneak in when the other side's not looking. It can't charge in because the current landlord's got it locked out, but it's always there, hovering just beyond the threshold, keeping an eye on us, making tiny intrusions, creating strange, fearful manifestations, using its influence to sow discord, fear, and madness wherever and whenever it can."

"Like through the folks downstairs?"

Canfield nodded. "Some people are more aware, others less, but each of us
knows
—I don't care whether it's in our preconscious, post-conscious, subconscious, in the most primitive corners of our hindbrains, in the very cells of our bodies, we all sense this battle raging. And that subliminal perception has been reflected in human religions since earliest recorded history: Horus and Set, the Titans and the Olympians, God and Satan. The war is out there, and it's been going on since the beginning of time. We're aware of it. We can sense the Otherness on the far side of the door, we can smell its hunger."

"Okay. Fine. Let's just say that's true. How's this ... this evil Great Whatever screwing with things now?"

"It can influence certain susceptible individuals—'touched by the Otherness,' as Melanie used to say."

"Touched is right," Jack said.

Canfield smiled. "Interesting, isn't it, that 'touched' has two meanings."

Jack hadn't thought of that, and thinking about it now was no comfort.

"Keep going."

"The willing susceptibles give in to the influence and go to work for it—they're the ones behind all the discord and cover-ups."

"Controlled by the Otherness."

"Not so much controlled, as simpatico. They're not taking orders, per se, but they feel a certain solidarity with its ethic."

"Ethic? What ethic?"

"All right, perhaps ethic isn't the best term. How about 'esthetic'? Does that sit better? Whatever the term or the reason, they're quite willing to inject as much chaos and discord as possible into everyday life. The unwilling fight back, but not without paying a price."

"SESOUP folk, in other words."

"Yes. They're what we call 'sensitives.' For better or worse, their nervous systems are more attuned to the Otherness. Their minds have to make sense of the external will impinging on them and so they think they're hearing voices, or come up with these wild-sounding theories."

"Like gray aliens, reptoids, Majestic-12, the New World Order—"

"You're thinking small: from Christianity and its Book of Revelations to the Hebrew Kaballah, to the Bhagavad Gita, they all come from the same place."

"So in other words, there's no shadow government trying to control our minds."

Canfield shook his head. "You're missing my point. I believe there
is
a shadow government with our worst interests at heart, but it's not controlled by aliens or the UN or Satan, it's run by people under the influence—note I said 'influence,' not 'direction'—of the Otherness. Aliens, devils and the NWO are simply some of the masks worn by that single, nameless chaotic entity ... the many faces of a single truth."

"Melanie's Grand Unification ... " Jack said.

"Exactly. But this conference is a unification of sorts too. The members of SESOUP are particularly sensitive to the Otherness, that's why membership is so selective. And now they're all gathered here, packed into a single structure, each one of them a lens of sorts, perceiving the Otherness, and focusing it, distilling it. Surely you've noticed the charged atmosphere in the hotel?"

"Sort of. But focusing it for what purpose?"

"Only time will tell. We must believe now, but soon we shall have proof."

"Proof?" Jack said. "Real hard proof? That'd be refreshing."

"Your scars are a form of proof, wouldn't you say?"

Jack was glad to get back to the subject of his scars. He remembered something Canfield had said.

"You mentioned that you and Melanie 'sensed' the creatures. You 'sensed' they were in New York but you didn't know where they came from."

"Of course we did. They came from the Otherness."

"I mean, what country."

"Country? What is a country but an artificial boundary agreed on by ephemeral governments."

"And I'll bet you don't know what they were called, either."

"What's in a name? Just a label attached by some primitive people. All that matters is that the creatures were fashioned ages ago by the Otherness, and they carry the Otherness in them."

Odd. He seemed to know the big picture, but not the details.

"Carried," Jack said. "Past tense. They became fried fish food at the bottom of New York Harbor."

Canfield nodded. "Yes. I remember waking from a nightmare about their death agonies. When I read about the ship that had burned in the harbor, I guessed that was what had happened." He shook his head. "Such a shame."

"Shame, hell. Probably the best thing I ever did."

Canfield stared at him. Jack couldn't read his expression through all that hair. When he spoke his voice was just above a whisper.

"
You
? You're the one who killed the Otherness creatures?"

Something in Canfield's wide eyes made Jack uneasy.

"Yeah, well, somebody had to do it. They happened to pick on the wrong little girl for their next meal."

"Then it's no wonder you're here. You
are
involved ... more deeply than you can possibly imagine."

"Involved in what?"

"In Melanie's Grand Unification Theory. The Otherness creatures are part of it, I'm sure, and therefore so are you."

"Whoopee," Jack said. "And does her theory involve weird contraptions as well?"

"You mean machines? I don't think so. Why?"

"Well, I've got a couple of crates of parts sitting in my room. I don't know why they're there—I don't even know how they got there—but I've got a funny feeling their appearance is somehow connected to Melanie's disappearance."

"I can't imagine how. You mean, you don't know who sent them or where they're from?"

"Tulsa, I think. North Tulsa."

Canfield grinned. "Ever been to Tulsa?"

"No."

"I have. It's not big enough to have a 'north.'"

"Maybe it was something else then. All I know is the plans for assembling this gizmo are printed inside the lid, and I saw 'N. Tulsa' scribbled along an edge."

"N. Tulsa ... " Canfield said softly. "N. Tul—" Suddenly he straightened in his wheelchair. "Dear God! It couldn't have been 'Tesla,' could it?"

Jack tried to picture the lid. "Could have been. It was kind of scrawled and I didn't pay that much attention because—"

Canfield was wheeling toward the door. "Let's go!"

"Where?"

"Your room. I want to see this myself."

Jack wasn't crazy about a guest in his room, but if Canfield knew something about those crates ...

"Where's Tesla?" Jack said as they took the elevator down one stop.

"Not where—
who
. I can't believe you've never heard of him."

"Believe it.
Who
is Tesla?"

"A long story, not worth telling if I'm wrong."

Jack followed him to his own room. A disturbing thought struck him as he was unlocking the door.

"How come you know where my room is?"

Canfield smiled. "After I sensed those scars on you, I made it my business to find out. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Probably half the people here know where you're staying."

"Why the hell should they care?"

"Because you're an unknown quantity. Some may suspect you're with the CIA, some may think you were sent by MJ-12, or maybe even an agent of the devil."

"Swell."

"You're surrounded by people who believe that nothing is as it seems. What did you expect?"

"You've got a point there."

That does it, he thought. This was like his worst nightmare. First thing in the morning, I'm out of here.

Jack had left the lights on, and allowed Canfield to precede him into the room. The crates lay open on the floor dead ahead, and Canfield rolled directly to them. He picked up one of the lids, scanned its inner surface.

"The other one," Jack said.

Canfield checked that one and slapped his hand against it when he found what he was looking for.

"Yes!" he cried, his voice an octave higher than usual. "It's him! Nikola Tesla!"

Jack read over his shoulder. Now that he really looked, he could see that the scrawl was "N. Tesla."

"Okay. So who is Nikola Tesla?"

"One of the great geniuses and inventors of the last three or four generations. Right up there with Edison and Marconi."

"I've heard of Edison and Marconi," Jack said. "Never heard of Tesla."

"Ever had an MRI?"

Jack leaned back against the writing table. "You mean that X-ray thing? No."

"First off, it's not an X ray. It's magnetic resonance imaging—M-R-I, get it? And the units of magnetism it uses are called 'Teslas'—one Tesla equals ten thousand Gauss—named after Nikola Tesla."

Jack was trying hard to be impressed. "Oh. Okay. But why is this genius inventor sending me stuff?"

"He's not. He died in 1943."

"I'm not happy to hear that a dead man is sending me boxes," Jack said.

Canfield rolled his eyes. "
Somebody
sent you these crates, but I don't believe for a moment it was Nikola Tesla. He was unquestionably a genius, but he didn't invent a way to come back from death. He was in his late twenties in the 1880s when he arrived here from Yugoslavia, and barely into his thirties when he perfected the polyphase alternating current power system. He sold the patents to Westinghouse for a million bucks—
real
money in those days, but still a bargain for Westinghouse. Today, every house, every appliance in the country uses AC power."

Now
Jack was impressed. "So this was a real guy, then—not one of these make-believe SESOUP bogeymen?"

"Very real. But as he got older his ideas became more and more bizarre. He started talking about free energy, cosmic ray motors, earthquake generators, and death rays. Lots of fictional mad scientists were inspired by Tesla."

Something about death rays and mad scientists clicked in Jack's brain.

"
The Invisible Ray
," he said.

"Pardon?"

"An old Universal horror flick. Haven't seen it in ages, but I remember Boris Karloff playing a mad scientist with a death ray."

"Was he made up with bushy hair and a thick mustache?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. And he had an Eastern European name—Janos, or something."

"There you go: That was Nikola Tesla all the way. He lived in the Waldorf and had an experimental lab out on Long Island at the turn of the century where he was trying to perfect broadcast power."

"Broadcast power?" Jack said.

"Yes. You've heard of it?"

Jack only nodded. Heard of it? He'd seen it in action.

"Anyway," Canfield continued, "Tesla starting building this tower way out on Long Island in a little town called Wardenclyffe ... "

Canfield's voice trailed off as his face went pale.

"Wardenclyffe, Long Island?" Jack said. "Never heard of it."

"That's because it doesn't exist anymore," Canfield said slowly. "It was absorbed by another town. It's now part of Shoreham."

Jack felt a cold tingle rush down his spine. "Shoreham? That's where Lew and Melanie live."