Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  Czito made it across the lobby and stepped into the open door of an elevator. “Thirty-third f loor,” he said to the elevator operator. The operator closed the door and started the car up into the hotel. Tesla dead, Czito thought, and the thought struck him as abstract and unreal. Only several months earlier Tesla had been in Philadelphia work- ing harder than he ever had before, and since Tesla’s return to New York he had been working intensively with George Scherff on a complex switch- ing system. Although Czito no longer worked for Tesla, he knew that switching system well, for he had assisted Tesla with building earlier mod- els for the last fifty years, and, only several weeks ago, Tesla had confided to Czito that the latest and final model was nearly perfected. It only needed some work done on its astronomical gravimeter. Tesla had said, “Soon we shall place the fixed stars on the pans of the balance scale.” Czito now thought of Tesla saying this. These words were the last that Tesla had spoken to Czito. At the time Tesla had spoken them, Czito had thought that Tesla looked more vibrant and alive than he had in years. Tesla dead, Czito thought again as he approached the 33rd f loor of the Hotel New Yorker. But the thought was only words, and the words sank down and away into nothingness, for Czito could not make the words attach to any- thing his mind could imagine or conceive.

  The elevator door opened. Czito stepped out into the hallway. Three men in dark suits stood before him. “Kolman Czito?” one of them asked. “Yes.” The man flashed an F.B.I. credential in front of Czito’s face and said, “Come with me.”

  Czito followed the man down the hall and they entered the door of Tesla’s apartment. The odor of guano and decay hit Czito with a jolt. He turned his head involuntarily and his glance fell upon a dead pigeon lying on its back

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  inside its cage. Czito’s stomach contracted into a knot, and that knot was Czito’s certain knowledge that Tesla was dead, for Tesla in life would never have allowed a pigeon to be neglected in this way.

  The blank-faced man approached Czito, and said, “I’m the one who spoke to you on the phone.” Czito recognized the blank-faced man’s voice, an emotionless monotone. “Yes,” Czito said, “can you identify yourself as a proper representative of the committee?”

  The blank-faced man reached into his jacket and brought out a card, the king of diamonds from a poker deck, and handed it to Czito. Czito turned the card over. On the back of the card, enclosed within a white border, was a photograph of a colorful tapestry design, an intricate, abstract woven pattern of lines and dashes. To the uninitiated, Czito held what appeared to be only an ordinary playing card. Czito held the back of the card up a few inches away from his face. He looked over the top edge of the card to the apartment wall several feet away. He concentrated on the wall while simultaneously trying to notice the back of the playing card in the lower periphery of his field of vision. In a moment, the back of the card began to glow. Czito began slowly lowering his gaze toward the top of the card, keeping his eyes focused in the middle distance all the while, until the white border of the card began to take on the look of a window frame. Beyond the window frame, Czito could see into a glowing blue field several inches in depth. Czito looked into the glowing depth of the field. Czito’s visual cortex subconsciously recognized the subliminal cues embedded and encoded into the design on the surface of the card, and this recognition auto- matically locked Czito’s eye muscles into an exact focus, allowing him to in- stantly see a stereoscopic image, the white border of the card taking on the appearance of a window frame surrounding a three-dimensional scene be- yond. The scene was the image of a three-dimensional color photograph of the blank-faced man’s face f loating in front of a field of glowing blue. Next to the blank-faced man’s face blazed the symbol of Majestic Seven: an eye emitting seven gold rays to form the shape of a pyramid. Below the blank-faced man’s face floated the numbers: 27811323981732. Below this series of numbers floated the words “Assignment: Gold Pigeon.” Czito blinked. The back of the playing card instantly changed back to an abstract two-dimensional tapestry pattern. Czito nodded to the blank-faced man and handed the playing card back to him. “Come on,” the blank-faced man said.

  The blank-faced man turned and went into Tesla’s bedroom. Czito followed. In the bedroom Czito saw the unmoving silhouette of Tesla’s profile against the gray glow of the window. Czito turned his head away, his glance falling upon the opposite wall. A painting had been removed from the wall, revealing a safe with

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  a key lock. The safe door had been opened, and, inside, a ring of keys lay on one of the shelves next to some papers and stock certificates.

  The blank-faced man said, “This is the only safe we can locate in the apartment. But we know he had a combination safe in here before.” “Yes,” Czito said, “he had that one moved and put back here.” Czito nodded toward the back of the safe as he removed a small metal box from his pocket. He pushed a button on the box and it emitted a rapid series of high- pitched beeps. Czito then reached under one of the shelves, pressed, and the whole back wall and shelves detached in a single piece. Czito handed the false panel and its contents to the blank-faced man who sat the panel down on the f loor and leaned it against the wall.

  Now Czito faced the real safe door that had been hidden behind the false panel and shelves. This real safe door had a combination-wheel lock. “We have to be careful,” Czito said. “Sometimes Mr. Tesla set booby-traps.” “That’s why we called you,” the blank-faced man said, “to keep things simple.” Czito reached in and spun the wheel seven times, then tried to pull the handle, but it was locked fast.

  “Maybe you have the numbers mixed up,” the blank-faced man said. Czito turned and looked up at the blank-faced man. “No,” Czito said, “I never get numbers mixed up. He changed the combination.” “We’ll take it from here,” the blank-faced man said. Czito stepped back. A man with a medical bag entered the bedroom. “You the doc?” the blank-faced man asked.

  The doctor nodded. The blank-faced man waved the doctor toward Tesla’s bed. One of the other men in dark suits came into the room.

  “We’ll have to crack it,” the blank-faced man said to his associate. “Do you have the stethoscope?” The other man brought out a stethoscope from a steel suitcase.

  At that moment the doctor opened his medical bag and took out his own stethoscope. The doctor pulled back the bedcovers from Tesla’s body, unbuttoned Tesla’s pajamas, and put the bell of the stethoscope on Tesla’s chest. The man at Tesla’s safe put the bell of his stethoscope on the door of the safe and spun its combination-wheel.

  The doctor listened for Tesla’s heart beat. The man at the safe listened for the click of the tumbler.

  Lightning flashed across Tesla’s unmoving face, followed by the crack and boom of thunder. The doctor removed his stethoscope and shook his head. “Goodbye, Mr. Tesla,” Czito whispered, a single tear traced down his cheek.

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  The doctor pulled the sheet over Tesla’s head. “Jackpot!” the man at the safe said.

  Czito and the doctor turned around. The man with the stethoscope was reaching into the safe. The blank-faced man stood ready with his hands ex- tended to take the safe’s contents. The steel suitcase stood open on a table next to the blank-faced man. The doctor glanced at Czito, then turned quickly and walked out of the room. The man with the stethoscope removed from the safe a thick manuscript bound in twine and a stack of notebooks.

  The blank-faced man put the manuscript in the suitcase and then took the notebooks and opened the one that was on the top of the stack. On the first page was a schematic diagram of an electrical circuit. It was captioned “Com- plete Method of Utilizing Radiant Energy.” He turned the page and came upon the drawing of a cigar-shaped airship. He turned the page again, and came upon the outline drawing of an oval-shaped crystal. Next to the drawing was a list of elements and minerals. He closed the notebook and slid the whole stack into the suitcase. The man with the stethoscope reached all the way to the back of the safe, sliding
his hand side-to-side, feeling for further false panels. Suddenly a f lash of gold tumbled from the safe to the f loor. Czito looked down and saw that it was a gold medal. He suddenly recog- nized it. “That!” Czito cried. “That is Mr. Tesla’s medal! The Edison Medal!” “So what?” the blank-faced man asked, stooping to pick up the medal. “It is the Edison Medal!” Czito said. “The greatest honor that can—” “Keep it, Pops,” the blank-faced man said, tossing the medal to Czito. “It’s just junk to us.”

  Czito caught the medal in his trembling hands.

  The blank-faced man closed the suitcase with a snap and spun its combina- tion-wheel. Czito saw another f lash of metal—this time from a pair of hand- cuffs. The blank-faced man snapped one bracelet of the handcuffs to the handle of the suitcase and the other to his left wrist. He then nodded to the man with the stethoscope, and the two men started toward the door. “Is that it?” Czito asked. “Is that all?” The blank-faced man stopped and turned back to look at Czito.

  “That’s it,” the blank-faced man said evenly with no interest. “That’s all. That’s all it ever was.” The blank-faced man nodded toward Tesla’s shrouded body. He said, “He understood. He knew. He always belonged to us. And everything he did.” “You know nothing!” Czito shouted. “He belonged to no one—but himself!” “If you say so, Pops,” the blank-faced man said with genuine indifference. Then he turned and went out the door.

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  Czito took out his handkerchief and wiped the Edison Medal. He then went over to the safe, stooped and lifted the false panel which the other men had emptied except for the ring of keys. He snapped the panel back into place inside the safe, and then looked at the Edison Medal which he held in his hand. He placed the Edison Medal on the shelf next to the keys. Czito stood looking at the keys and the medal a moment longer. He then took a step back, turned, and walked out of the room.

  A University Somewhere in the United States, January 15, 1943

  The blank-faced man and his associate (the man who had used the stetho- scope) sat in front of the professor’s desk, their hats in hand. The professor sat behind his desk studying one of the manuscripts taken from Tesla’s safe. The professor was an expert on the life and works of Mark Twain. He first read Twain as a boy, but later, when he was a young man attending Columbia University, he went to hear Mark Twain speak at Carnegie Hall. The professor still remembered Twain’s peculiar gait as he made his way up to the lectern, something like a waddling duck or a metronome missing a beat. When Twain spoke, his tenor voice crackled and drawled, forming long, pulled-out words, his hands tracing slow figure eights in the air as if the words he had spoken now f loated in front of him, now become invisible taffy ready for further pulling. Mark Twain’s hand would pause in mid-air, his face would freeze, and then, barely perceptible beneath shaggy eyebrows, his eyes would shift to one side and stare at some point somewhere, some spot in the hall that had abso- lutely riveted his attention. Not a sound in the hall. Then Mark Twain would whisper one syllable, and the entire assemblage would explode in uncontrol- lable laughter. The laughter would roll across the house from left to right, then toward the stage, then to the back of the house, then forward again. A back- wash of laughter—nervous titters and iconoclastic cackling—would splash and trickle from the balconies, then the chaos would subside. Mark Twain’s eyes would shift again. Another silence. Then another whispered syllable would rustle and whistle with incredible procrastination from beneath Twain’s bushy mustache. Now true chaos reigned. The young, would-be professor saw the men who were sitting in front of him bend double and roll in their seats; he heard a man behind him gasp between fits of laughter, “Make him stop! Make him stop! I’m in pain!” Suddenly the young, would-be professor realized he had no idea what Mark Twain had been saying. He had been entirely focused on Twain’s manner of speaking and moving. Yet it did not matter. Twain could have been speaking Latin; it would have made no difference. The young, would-be

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  professor realized that here was an actor, an actor as much as any Booth or Forrest or Irving.

  As the young, would-be professor thought about this, Mark Twain shifted his position on stage. There was a rustle of air in the hall; the crowd settled down. It felt as if something had passed over the house; the mood had changed. Twain was looking down at the lectern. When Twain looked up again, the young, would-be professor realized he was seeing an entirely different man. This Mark Twain spoke a little faster, did not drawl much, and did not saw the air with his hands. He stood straight and talked straight and seemed to be making sense. The young, would-be professor began trying to focus on what Mark Twain was saying. Twain was speaking about American Imperialism. His remarks were sur- prising, his attacks bitter. He spoke with even, measured tones. No one laughed. Twain was not waiting for anyone to laugh. He was talking fast now, pouring out invective; it sounded like profanity, but only because there was no music in his voice, unless a drumbeat could be considered music. Mark Twain was asking the audience, “Are we qualified to enlighten and purify the rest of the world while our own hands are unclean? Will not our attempts to help our foreign brothers who sit in darkness only lead inevitably to their enslavement? How can beneficence enslave, you ask? Conditional be- neficence is no beneficence, but a cold contract promoted by a party looking out for its own interests. Conditional beneficence gives with one hand and takes back twice as much with the other. The conditional beneficence which we now so nobly hold out to our foreign brothers who sit in darkness will bind them in a more loathsome enslavement than the world has ever known, because it will be slavery hidden under a new and unrecognized name. Shall we go on confer- ring our civilization upon our foreign brothers who sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit this new century to the old game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first?”

  Mark Twain stood for a moment, his eyes moving from person to person in the audience. Then he turned and sat down. The silence of uncertainty hung heavy in Carnegie Hall. The other speak- ers sitting on the stage next to Mark Twain looked at each other; they knew Twain had departed from his prepared text. Down in the hall there were furtive whispers. Then one lone pair of hands in the balcony began a slow clapping; that pair was joined by another, and another—and another. A tumult of applause broke in the air of Carnegie Hall. When it died down, Booker T. Washington was introduced. The young, would-be professor kept his eye on Mark Twain who sat ram- rod straight, looking ahead. Twain did not seem to be listening to Washington, or to be even thinking his own thoughts. He was absent, elsewhere, thought

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  the young, would-be professor. Where was he? Where had he gone? Back to the Mississippi River? Or some foreign, exotic land? India? Egypt?

  Mark Twain scratched his cheek and pulled at the corner of his mustache. He was back for a moment—then gone again—somewhere off into space. Or was he gone? Was this distant, solemn man the real Mark Twain and the funny little man on the platform the imposter? Or were both men real? Or neither? This was the beginning for the professor. He never saw Mark Twain again— and he never stopped looking for him.

  “So what can you tell me, Professor?” the blank-faced man asked. The professor looked up. “Excuse me?”

  “What can you tell me? Is it the real McCoy?”

  The professor came to himself. He picked up his magnifying glass and scrutinized the manuscript. “Well… The paper looks right. The typewriter characters seem to resemble some I recall on some of Mark Twain’s manuscripts written around 1906. He was dictating them to a stenographer who later would do the typing. Usually there are a few corrections or additions on the typewritten page done in Mark Twain’s own handwriting. This manuscript seems to have none.” “I can tell you. It doesn’t,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Yes,” the professor said, “it’s a finished manuscript, retyped from an- other draft. Very difficult to determine authenticity with suc
h a thing. Even if we matched typewriter characters and paper stock, we couldn’t be abso- lutely sure that Mark Twain was the author, although the evidence might suggest it. In such a case, provenance becomes very important. Where did you find this?” “Can’t say,” the blank-faced man replied. “We just need you to tell us if this was written by Mark Twain.” The professor frowned at the blank-faced man; he was not accustomed to dealing with individuals such as this. “Well,” the professor said, his voice taking on an edge, “if you want a definitive opinion—” “We do.”

  “That will take some time.”

  “How much time?”

  The professor looked over at the blank-faced man’s associate, who had not said a word. Suddenly the professor felt uneasy. The professor said, “Well. My schedule is very full, and—”

  “We’d like you to take care of this first,” the blank-faced man said, and his eyes finally took on a hint of an expression: his eyelids drooped, casting a ruthless shadow over his narrowing pupils.

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  “I see, “the professor said, “I see. You have a reason for the urgency.” “There’s a reason. It’s none of your business.” The professor felt a sting from the words.

  “Well…” The professor’s mind raced. He did not want to deal with these men. He wanted a way out. But the dean had insisted that he see them. The dean would not tell the professor who these men were, only that they were with the federal government, and that it was of utmost importance that the professor give them full cooperation. “Well… can you give me until tomorrow?” “Tomorrow?” “I need to study the whole manuscript. Analyze the style of writing. The vocabulary. Subject matter. I can only draw a conclusion from that. But I’ll tell you now: there’s no way to determine with absolute certainty who wrote this without its provenance.” “I told you. We can’t give you that.” “Of course you did.” The professor f lipped through the manuscript. It was too long to read in a single evening, but he figured if he read fast, he could, if he spent the whole day and evening, skim the manuscript and get some sense of it. “Tomorrow,” the professor said. “Say—nine am?” “If that’s what you say.” “That is what I say.” “All right.” The blank-faced man rose along with his associate. “We’ll be here at nine tomorrow,” the blank-faced man said.