At that moment I felt impelled to release some of the feelings I have been holding back for several days.
"Mr Tesla," I said. "I have stood by while you have been using a chunk of metal, assuming that you needed to do so for experimental purposes. Is it my understanding, at this belated moment, that you could be using something else instead?"
"Within reason, yes."
"Then why do you not build the thing to do what I require?"
"Because, sir, you have not expressly described your requirements!"
"They do not involve the sending of short iron sticks," I said hotly. "Even if the contraption were to work in the way I thought I had specified, it would be of little use to me. I wish it to transmit a living body! A man!"
"So you wish me to demonstrate my failures not on a hapless iron rod, but on a human being? Whom do you nominate for this dangerous experiment?"
"Why should it be dangerous?" I said.
"Because all experiment is risky."
"I am the one who will be using this."
"You wish to submit yourself ?" Tesla laughed with brittle menace. "Sir, I shall require the remainder of your money before I start experimenting on you!"
"It is time for me to leave," I said, and turned away, feeling angry and chastened. I pushed past him and Alley, and made it to the outside. There was no sign of Randy Gilpin but I strode off anyway, determined if necessary to walk the whole way down to the town.
"Mr Angier, sir!" Tesla was standing at the door to his laboratory. "Let us not exchange hasty words. I should have explained properly to you. Had I but known that you wished to transmit living organisms, you would not have presented me with such a challenge. It is difficult to deal with massy, inorganic compounds. Living tissue is not of the same order of problem."
"What are you saying, Professor?" I asked.
"If you wish me to transmit an organism, please return here tomorrow. It shall be done."
I nodded my confirmation then continued on my way, stepping on the loose gravel of the path that descended the mountainside. I expected to meet Gilpin on the way down, but even should he not appear I was anyway determined to make the most of the exercise. The road snaked down the mountain in a series of sharp bends doubling back on each other, often with a precipitous drop to the side.
When I had walked about half a mile my attention was caught by a flash of colour in the long grass beside the track, and I stopped to investigate. It was a short iron rod, painted orange, apparently identical to the one Tesla had been using. Thinking I might after all keep a souvenir of this extraordinary meeting with Tesla, I picked it up, brought it down the mountain, and I have it with me now.
19th August 1900
I found Tesla in a mood of despond when Gilpin deposited me at the laboratory this morning.
"I fear I am about to let you down," he said to me when he came to the door. "Much work remains, and I know how pressing is your return to Britain."
"What has occurred?" I inquired, glad that the anger that flared between us yesterday was a thing of the past.
"I believed it would be a simple matter with life organisms. The structure is so much simpler than that of the elements. Life already contains minute amounts of electricity. I was working on the assumption that all I had to do was boost that energy. I am at a loss as to why this has not worked! The computations worked out exactly. Come and see the evidence for yourself."
Inside the laboratory I noticed Mr Alley was adopting a stance I had never associated with him before; he stood in bellicose fashion, arms folded protectively, jaw jutting pugnaciously, a man angry and defensive if ever I saw one. Beside him on the bench was a small wooden cage, containing a diminutive black cat with white whiskers and paws, presently asleep.
As his eyes were fixed on me as I walked in, I said, "Good morning, Mr Alley!"
"I hope you will not be a party to this, Mr Angier!" Alley cried. "I brought my children's cat on the firm promise that it would not be harmed. Mr Tesla gave me an exact assurance last night! Now he insists that we submit the wretched creature to an experiment that will undoubtedly kill it!"
"I don't care for the sound of this," I said to Tesla.
"Nor I. Do you think I am inhumane, capable of torturing one of God's more beautiful creatures? Come and see what you think."
He led me to the apparatus, which I immediately saw had been entirely rebuilt overnight. When I was a foot or two away from it, I recoiled in horror! About half a dozen enormous cockroaches, with shiny black carapaces and long antennae, were scattered all around. They were the most repulsive creatures I had ever seen.
"They are dead, Angier," said Tesla, noticing my reaction. "They cannot harm you."
"Yes, dead!" said Alley. "And that's the rub! He intends me to place the cat in the same jeopardy."
I looked down at the huge and disgusting insects, wary of any sign from them of a return to life. I stepped back again when Tesla nudged at one with the toe of his boot, and turned it over for me to see.
"It seems I have built a machine that murders roaches," Tesla murmured gently. "They are God's creatures too, and I am made despondent by it all. I did not intend that this device should take life."
"What's going wrong?" I said to Tesla. "Yesterday you sounded so sure."
"I have calculated and recalculated a dozen times. Alley has checked the mathematics too. It is the nightmare of every experimental scientist: an inexplicable dichotomy between theoretical and actual results. I confess I am confounded. Such a thing has never happened to me before."
"May I see the calculations?" I said.
"Of course you may, but if you are not a mathematician I fear they will not convey much to you."
He and Alley produced a great loose-leaf ledger in which his computations had been carried out, and together we pored over them for a long time. Tesla showed me, as best I was able to understand, the principle behind them, and the calculated results. I nodded as intelligently as I could, but only at the end, when I could take the calculations for granted and concentrate on the results, did an unexpected glimmering of sense shine through.
"You say that this determines the distance?" I said.
"That is a variable. For purposes of experimentation I have been using a value of one hundred metres, but such a distance is academic, since, as you see, nothing I try to transmit travels any distance at all."
"And this value here?" I said, jabbing my finger at another line.
"The angle. I have been using compass points. It will direct in any of three hundred and sixty degrees from the apex of the energy vortex. Again, for the time being that is an entirely academic entry."
"Do you have a setting for elevation?" I asked.
"I am not using it. Until the apparatus is fully working I am merely aiming into the clear air to the east of the laboratory. One must be careful not to cause a rematerialization in a position already occupied by another mass! I do not care to think what might happen."
I looked thoughtfully at the neatly inscribed mathematics. I do not know the process by which it happened, but suddenly I was struck by inspiration! I dashed out of the laboratory and stared from the doorway due east. As Tesla had said, what lay beyond was mostly clear air, because in this direction the plateau was at its narrowest and the ground began to drop away some ten metres from the path. I moved quickly over and looked downwards. Below me I could glimpse through the trees the pathway snaking down the mountainside.