Conspiracies

"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.