Tesla's Signal (35 page)

“No, it's
you
who's being irrational. If you're not going to do anything but stay and hide, we may as well just give the Martians the key to Earth and put out the welcome mat. Now excuse me,” she finished, turning her back. “I have better things to do than stand here arguing.”

She picked up a canvas bag at the far corner of the room.

“Where are you going?”

“That's my business.”

“Clara, please.” He went to the door and blocked her exit.

“I'm going outside to practice my Theremin. I have a concert in town tomorrow. Do I have your permission,
sir?”

“Of course,
Ma'am
. You are free to do whatever you wish. I do not control you.” And he returned to his spot at the lab table.

“Then I'll be going somewhere quiet,” she told him. “I have to practice for my performance.”

She retrieved a small amplifier box and carried her musical paraphernalia up the trail toward the summit.

Her insides churned with agitation.
I knew it had to happen sooner or later,
she realized. It was just a matter of time until Niko tried to pull rank on her.
The man's ego is as gigantic as Wardenclyffe Tower!

She picked a location at the top of the mountain, at a place which had the most wonderful echoing acoustics. There she assembled her Theremin on a large boulder with a flat surface. Tapping the wireless electric power from the array that she and Niko had built, she turned on the instrument. A small telephone amplifier, placed inside a cherry wood box, served as a speaker.

She played for a few hours, calming her nerves, letting the sounds echo across the mountains. As she played, she drifted into a meditative reverie. Music was a dimension all its own: a way to free the soul, a pathway into the Wisdom realm.

And that was what she needed. She had not come up here merely to practice. She needed an answer.

She reached inside the Theremin's metal box, where she had hidden the material that had put Niko in such a bad mood a few weeks ago.
The Martian fragment: it is made of Silver-chamber material. Something that they use to send thought waves.
No wonder it upset him.
 

But no matter how much it scared her friend, she could not leave this mountain until she learned the truth.

She carefully unwrapped the shard and placed it on the Theremin's surface.
What is your secret?
It resembled a piece of eggshell, if the egg had been the size of a house.

Her fingers plucked the air and floated like stray breezes, playing vibratos and atonal curves. Meanwhile her mind roamed free, contemplating the structure of the shard. Clara had a gift for understanding metals, but this material was beyond her experience.
Hmm
. A true Wisdom adept, such as her grandfather, might achieve the necessary concentration. How had Grandfather tapped the Divine Wisdom?

She had once seen him chant the Names and draw the patterns that opened the gate. But since then...Clara had buried the memories of her grandfather, along with his mortal remains, and those of the rest of the family—that day in Kostopol. For years she had numbed the pain of her loss with obsessive study of chemical formulas and electric circuits.

Just as bad as Nikola, with his multiplication and doing everything by threes. I'm no better!

But now was the time to reveal what had been buried.

As she drew music from the aether, she dug deep inside and retrieved her memories of her
Zayde
...her grandfather who was always drawing and writing in his tattered books. She saw how he had inscribed shapes in the dirt. He would say the trance-prayer-words:
Baruch…shem...kavod...malchuso!
He would draw patterns of Hebrew letters in spirals and triangles...each of them associated with numbers; codes; names of the Attributes.

She smoothed a patch of dirt and placed the Martian fragment in its center. Around it, she began to draw the patterns as
Zayde
had done. As she stared at them, her vision blurred and the patterns morphed into chemical formulas.

Her lips shaped the chant. She lay down on top of the circle of letters, holding the fragment on her forehead, leaving the world and entering the realm of the Holy.
Open up to me, tell me your secrets. Speak of your molecular bonds, the links that hold you, the dance of your particles, the frequency of your vibration. How do you transmit Martian messages?
 

The sun went down; the crickets began their evening song; the moon rose while Clara  meditated on the material, walking through its lattice structure, turning it this way and that. She peeled back layers and saw the soul of the object and spoke to its components.
Oh. I see. You are a resonator. You magnify the hypnotic frequency that the Martians use. Can we duplicate it? Can we cancel that frequency? Can we magnify your effect? Ah...I see now.
 

Eventually Clara reached the end of her search and her eyes flew open. After a moment's disorientation, she found herself lying on the ground, stretched out on top of the mountain.
I fell asleep here? How silly of me.
But someone had lit a campfire and covered her with a blanket.
Who...?
 

“Awake now?” said Niko. He had been sitting on a rock, watching her, all this time.

“Oh! Good evening, Niko. You...you startled me.” Clara avoided his eyes.
He came all the way up here to look after me
.... She smiled, reflecting that this tender gesture was the equivalent of a 'normal' man carrying her off, laying her on a feather mattress and making sweet love to her.
After I said such mean things to him...
“Guess I fell asleep. Thanks for covering me.”

“You're welcome, my dear. I hope you had a good nap.”

“Niko,” Clara finally said. “I'm sorry for the things I said today.”

“Yes. I'm sorry as well,” He gave her a hesitant smile.“What were you doing, Clara? Spells and incantations?”

“Look, Nikola. You like to walk 33 blocks; I like to draw designs in the dirt. All right?” She rubbed the letters out. She didn't need them anymore; the answers had fallen into place. Now all she needed was a chance to put her knowledge together .

***

The next day she packed up the Theremin, and a few other items as well.

Dr. Davidson had loaned her one of his late wife's outfits. Clara struggled to fit herself into an uncomfortable slim-line purple gown with beaded fringes, and a matching shawl. As for the pointy high-heel shoes, she jammed them into a knapsack to put on at the last possible second.
Who invented these? A torturer from the Spanish Inquisition?
 

Niko came and leaned against the door. “Clara, you look exquisite. I wish I could go with you.”

“I wish you could too. I'll be staying in town overnight. The concert and soirée will go till late and I don't want to drive over these roads at night. One of the professors' wives has offered me lodging.”

“I'll miss you, Clara.” By his forlorn expression, she knew that if Niko were anyone else, he would be giving her a farewell hug. Only his eyes told her everything that his body could not.

“Good luck with your concert,” he said as she got into the Roadster. “What is it the theater people say? 'Break a leg'.”

“Thanks. Oh—Niko? Davidson's coming by to get me in his Hupmobile, but I'd like to take the Roadster instead. He says one of his tires is low on air.”

Today Clara was glad their experiment in telepathy had not succeeded. There was something she did not want Niko to know.

***

“It's a shame Nick couldn't come,” Davidson said, straightening his tie.

“He can't tear himself away from his work.” And that was just fine with Clara. She had made other plans which didn't include him. “He came to one of my concerts once,” she reminisced. “He tried to talk to me afterwards and I snubbed him cold, like some spoiled
prima donna.”
 

“You did? Why?”

“Oh, just because I was a silly girl,” Clara admitted, laughing.

“My daughter Lorraine is kind of a silly girl,” Davidson said, “Or at least, she was.”

They drove down the narrow, winding road to the bottom of the mountain. Route 322 then crossed an expanse of farmland and arrived in town. They parked the Roadster on a side street and stepped into the lobby of Schwab Auditorium, a grand marble edifice surrounded by ornate wrought-iron lamp posts.

She brought in her equipment, and went to the lounge to complete her transformation into the elegant Miss Kara. She painted her lips a deep ruby; shaded her eyes and donned white silk gloves. She twisted her hair into an elaborate bun and held it in place with a feathered headband. And while she completed these preparations, Clara did her best to don the persona that went with them: an exotic Russian belle whose only concern was to entertain the wealthy.

The art connoisseurs of State College milled about, holding drinks and hors d'oeuvres and admiring the Impressionist and Art Nouveau prints. They finally migrated to the red plush seats and kept up a genteel mutter of conversation, until Davidson announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, give your warmest welcome to Miss Kara, a music prodigy from Kiev!”

The velvet brocade curtains parted to the sound of applause.

A music student in a tuxedo played the first chords on the grand piano. Clara struck a pose and sounded the first note on the Theremin. It produced quite a stir, as always.

The pianist played a couple of Bach Preludes, some études by Liszt and Chopin and her favorites, the Valse, Serenade and The Swan. She knew she had the audience in the palm of her hand. There had been a time in Clara's youth when she had thought of making her name as a musician. But she had chosen to follow her other passion instead: electricity, and its high priest, Nikola Tesla.

After it was all done, the patrons crowded around, fascinated with the weird newfangled instrument, wanting to know how it worked, and some of them wished to try it themselves. She made conversation, watched them drop bills into her collection jar, and counted every second until she could leave.

A couple of the professors clustered around a newspaper, waving their hands in agitation. Clara drifted over to them. Dr. Davidson handed her the paper without a word.

Massive Earthquake in San Francisco
, the headline read.
Three Thousand Confirmed Dead. City in Ruins,
said the secondary headline.
Residents report seeing a burning doomsday ray from the sky, just before the earth split apart.
 

“Dear Lord,” Clara muttered, and scanned the next headline.

Mad Scientist Nikola Tesla Held Responsible for Disasters all Over America. The President urges Mr. Tesla to turn himself in and put an end to all of this tragedy and human suffering.

“
Oi gevalt!”
Clara covered her mouth with her hand. If that was not blackmail, nothing was.
The Martians will keep destroying cities until someone turns him in.
Or until Niko turned himself in, to spare the rest of humanity.
He might do it, too
, she realized.

The price on Nikola's head had now gone up to $50,000.
Well, so much for the short break from my exciting life as a wanted criminal's accomplice.  
 

Dr. Davidson found her in the foyer and spoke privately. “How are you, Miss Clara? I'm sorry the news continues to be unpleasant. There's no need to show this to our friend back there on the mountain, is there?”

“No. I'm not going back there tonight. I'm going to New York.”

“What!”

“I'll drop you at your place on my way across the mountain.”

Davidson's mouth turned to an O of surprise. “What! You and N—our friend...you're not splitting up?”

“Of course not! But...we can't go any farther with our projects, because the materials we need are back in New York City. And he can't exactly show his face there.”

“Mm, that's a problem.” Davidson twirled his champagne glass. “What does Mr. Slate think about your trip?”

“He doesn't know. I planned it out in secret. If he knew I was going, he'd try to stop me. Or, he'd insist on coming too. That would be $50,000 for some lucky
shnook
and a nasty death for Nick Slate.”

“Hm, I see what you mean.” Davidson considered for awhile. “It so happens I've been contemplating a trip to New York myself.”

“You have?”

“I'm worried about my daughter. I want to bring her home. Would you...” he hesitated. “Would you consider taking me along?”

“But...it may be dangerous—” she broke off, realizing her hypocrisy. Niko had said the same thing to her.