Wonder of the Worlds

by Sesh Heri

  “The metal fascinates you,” Kel said. “These bridges and this tower—all were built thousands of years ago. The formula for their metal has been lost and our greatest sages have been unable to analyze or duplicate it. But then, that should not be surprising.” “You have been watching Earth a long time,” Tesla said.

  “For centuries, Mr. Tesla, for centuries. Our royal astronomers have long been fascinated with your blue world, and of the sea of space beyond with its suns and planets. Only we royals knew of the existence of Erta, our name for your planet Earth. Most of the people of Khahera believe the universe is solid rock extending into infinite space, and they the only inhabitants at the universe’s center. The great royal plan has long been to return to Earth and conquer it. For centuries the plan was only a dream. But like the development on your world, we here on Khahera have slowly rediscovered the old knowledge. One hundred years ago our people came upon a sealed chamber filled with ancient writings. Our greatest sages could not understand much of what they had found. But they understood enough to begin a great work. It was the building of a ship propelled by a thunderous fire, a ship that could carry a man out of our universe of infinite rock to a universe of infinite space—and f loating in that infinite space a blue world rich in water and air.” “You lived secretly among us,” Tesla said, “watching us, walking among us—” “Studying your languages, your ways. Every two years as Khahera swung close to Erta, we would send out an expedition of eight men. The first expedi- tion descended from the main ship to Erta in a special winged rocket craft and landed on a desert plain in the western regions of your North American con- tinent. The men of that expedition secreted their craft in a remote canyon on the edge of that desert plain and set out on a march of several days until they reached a small settlement. There they presented themselves as men from a foreign land who had been lost in the desert. Soon they learned the rudiments of your English language, acquired some of your money, and moved on to larger towns and cities, always observing, always learning, always remember- ing. They reached San Francisco, traveled by train to New York, and then by ship to London. A few months later they returned to the western desert of North America and departed in their ship. Some seven months later they

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  reached Khahera in their main ship. This first expedition was carried out in your year of 1876, and it set the pattern for all expeditions that followed. In the last ten years I have been on two such expeditions. You are surprised?”

  “I would think,” Tesla said, “that a king could not afford to leave his king- dom unattended.” “Ah,” Kel said, “a weak king cannot afford to turn his back for a moment. A true king has no back. A true king does not delegate his vision; he sees all for himself, and thus is never deceived. And I saw all that was worth seeing of your world, but I was most interested in the city of New York and spent most of my time there. It was there one day at the New York Stock Exchange that I first heard the name of Tesla. And I heard of the work of Tesla. And I knew it was Tesla whom I would most fully come to know.” “Your airship is not a rocket,” Tesla said. “No,” Kel said, “it is not a rocket.” “It was built from my designs,” Tesla said.

  “Of course,” Kel said, “my airship was made from your designs down to every vacuum tube, magnifying coil, and spark gap. My spies followed your every move, your every thought, and as your workers built in your secret New Jersey laboratory, my workers built in mine only ten miles away. For every stroke of the rivet gun, for every turn of the screw made by your workers, my workers would follow with a stroke of the rivet gun, a turn of the screw of their own. And as your airship became assembled and completed and real, so also did my airship, in turn, become assembled and reach its completion, its reality. But when my spies began following your purchases of materials they found something most interesting. The same metals and min- erals you were acquiring were also to be found in ancient documents here on Khahera—documents relating to the making of a crystal of infinite power. Our sages could never understand these documents, but now, with our spies studying your methods, we realized that you had rediscovered the secret of making the Great Crystal of Power, the long-lost ancient wonder which even our wisest sages believed to be only a myth. The Great Crystal. It changes everything, doesn’t it?” “And how is that?” Tesla asked.

  “Its power, Mr. Tesla, its power. The crystal is power. Infinite power. The power of the gods.” “The power that destroyed both our worlds.”

  “The ancient ones? They were not equal to the power. That was why it destroyed them. But you and I, Mr. Tesla—we do not fear the power. If you had feared the power you would not have come here. You would not have created the crystal.” “I created the crystal for mankind. To free the human race from the slavery of physical toil.”

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  “Slavery of physical toil? Now, do not disappointment me. Please do not disappointment me with such naïve statements, Mr. Tesla. The masses are capable of nothing but the slavery of physical toil. Come. Let me show you something. Come. Bring your associates with you.” Kel led them through the stone arch set into the wall of volcanic rock and through a tunnel that extended about one hundred feet and opened out into another region of the cavern. Ahead, another bridge extended out over the cavern to another wall of rock about two hundred feet distant. Kel led them all out on to this bridge and stopped and waved his hand over the yawning gulf below. The others stopped and looked down. A hundred feet below, a bridge spanned from one outcropping of the cavern to another about a hundred yards away. A great crowd of people walked slowly over the bridge, each carrying a lighted object, a lamp of some kind, or perhaps a candle. “The people of Khahera,” Kel said. “Where are they going?” Lillie asked. “Nowhere,” Kel said. “What are they doing?” Ade asked.

  “The perambulation,” Kel said, “The Walk of Rememberance.” “What is it?” Lillie asked.

  “A religious ritual,” Kel said, “performed three times a day. It reenacts the destruction of Khahera thousands of years ago and the great surface evacuation that was made when only a select few were permitted to f lee here below to escape the horrors above—slow death by star vation and freezing—then quick death by fire and suffocation in the vacuum. The people today do not understand the meaning of the story. They do not know the meanings of such things as ‘planet,’ ‘asteroids,’ and ‘space.’ They know only that the world was convulsed and the good were sent below here to the center of the universe and the bad were left far above in the rock somewhere to die—to die in the wilderness of rock above our heads where no one but our high priests dare go today. And so they walk and walk and walk. The perambulation. Mr. Tesla, do you know why our priests invented this silly, pointless, disgustingly stupid ritual? Do you know why? Can you guess? It was to give these idiots something to do! Some- thing to do! Some physical toil! Come with me!” Kel led them across the bridge to the opposite wall of rock and through another tunnel that curved to the right and emerged upon a balcony overlook- ing another section of the vast cavern. There they all stopped and looked down. They gazed down upon monstrously large steam engines, their pistons slowly moving back and forth. “Ancient steam engines,” Kel said, “running on natural volcanic heat, running virtually without stop for thousands of years, with almost no repairs—

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  ancient machines, providing all our food, all our clothing, all our necessities, year in, year out, generation upon generation without end. And during all those hundreds of generations, no one understood how the machines operated and no one cared to know.” Kel turned away and walked back in the direction they had come. Tesla walked beside Kel now, with Lillie, Ade, and Houdini following behind.

  Kel said, “The people of Khahera were content to graze upon the products of the machines, graze like cows. But they were a growing population, spread- ing through all the tunnels girdling the planet, and, in sum, they were an almost useless population. So the kings of Khahera contrived periodic civil wars to reduce the population, and, through
conf lict and synthesis, reinforce the remaining populace’s obedience to their king, and, with empty ritual and make-work and religious slogans extolling the virtue of labor as an end in itself, rob the people of the hours and days of their lives, dulling their minds into a raw material which could then be shaped according to the king’s will. Now, according to my will.” Kel turned to Tesla. They had stopped on a bridge spanning the cavern. The Martian King’s pink eyes glowed with a fire that Tesla had seen before in the eyes of the richest men on Earth. “Are the people of your world any different?” Kel asked. “Oh, yes, I know. I have read your John Locke and your Federalist Papers. I have studied your adopted American Constitution and your so-called Declaration of Indepen- dence. I have seen your sham ‘democracy,’ your sham ‘people’s elections’ made with bought votes and bought counters of votes. I have seen your elected officials, mere puppets of the world’s real rulers who are unelected and un- known to the masses who they rule. Yes, I have seen your supposed demo- cratic government and I have laughed. And I have studied the usury of your money system and your supposedly free economic competition carried out with secret threats and lies and murders. I have seen half your planet slumber- ing in the smoke of opium and the other half bowing before the whip, the club, and the gun. I have seen your labor strikes and their settlements with the laborers still enslaved, still bowed down before their masters. Should this as- tonish? The last thing the laboring masses of your world desire is to set down the burdens of their labor. You can see their devotion to their slavery in their hostility to the machine—the machine which will labor for them and thus make their very existence superf luous to their masters—the machine which will trans- form the useful laborer into the useless eater. Instinctively the masses of your world sense that their rulers intend to replace them with the machine, and, that when the machine age dawns upon your world in full, their rulers will dispense with them because they, the idle masses, will have become a useless excess population which can no longer serve or amuse their masters. I ask you, Mr. Tesla, are the people of your world any different than the people of mine? Do

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  they not spend their lives in meaningless, empty, toil—in mindless, repetitive actions? In their own perambulations? Slavery? Slavery is all of which they are capable. Slavery is their desire. Slavery is their destiny. Slavery is their salva- tion. And you, Mr. Tesla, you would free them. Free them to do what?” “To live,” Tesla said. “To live as they have never imagined. Never dreamed.”

  “Of course they’ve never dreamed!” Kel roared. “And they never will! Dreams and imaginings are for men such as you and me.” “You have dreamed?” Tesla asked. “You have imagined? No. You have imitated. You have stolen, like every mediocrity that has ever existed.” “I?” Kel asked, “A mediocrity?” “Mediocrity is not stupidity, it is malice. Mediocrity is not ignorance, it is tyranny—the lust to rule the will of another.”

  “Platitudes!” Kel shouted, “Swill! Flattery for the masses! Words fit only for the ears of cattle being led to the slaughter!” “No, they are the epitaph of a tyrant. It is not that the people cannot be free, but that the tyrant does not want people to be free. It is not that the people are ‘useless,’ but that they do not exist for the purpose of being used at all. It is not that resources upon which human life depends are scarce, but that the tyrants stand at the door of the infinite f low of energy which permeates the universe and say to the laboring masses: ‘This fountain of life is not yours, but ours, and we will parcel it out to you according to the degree of your obedi- ence to our will.’ No, you tyrants do not want people to be free, for in a free world, you would have nothing upon which to feed. The malice in your soul would turn in upon itself and eat you to death.” “Ah! Ah, ha, ha!” Kel laughed. “The electrician attempts psychology, nor- mative philosophy, and teleological criticisms while lacking any comprehen- sion of high policy and royal consciousness! The great minds know that civili- zation itself is tyranny. The whole universe is ordered upon the principle of predation. It is nothing less than a pyramid of power. At its apex—the masters— at its base—the slaves—in between—the fools who believe us when we tell them they are free.” Tesla said, “A pyramid with power f lowing only to the apex cannot stand. The universe is a circuit of power. The power f lows to all parts, great and small; yet the greatest is only a finite part. Whenever any part attempts to draw to itself infinite power, it will exceed its capacity and be destroyed. Such is the destiny of all tyrants: destruction—by the very power at which they grasp.”

  “You are a disappointment,” Kel said. “I had hoped that you could be of use to me, and so I have indulged in this little chat. But now I see you are nothing but a silly fool. An electrician. A mechanic. A slave. You have no concept of policy. You cannot grasp the genius of pure will.” “Yes,” Tesla said, “pure will. That’s what it always comes down to with tyrants. As I knew it would with you. That is why I have this.”

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  Tesla suddenly drew his electric ray gun and aimed it at Kel.

  “Of course,” Kel said, “You prove my point. It always comes down to pure will. It is the universal principle. The beginning of all things—and the end.” “Put up your hands,” Tesla said.

  Kel did not move.

  “Shoot me, Mr. Tesla?” Kel asked. “Think again. Look up there.”

  Kel had nodded upwards to the wall of rock rising up in the distance behind Tesla. “See what he’s talking about,” Tesla said to Ade, and Ade turned about slowly and looked up. “Two men above us with some kind of weapons,” Ade said. “My royal guards,” Kel said. “They are deadly shots.” “So am I,” Tesla said, and he, Lillie, Ade, and Houdini began backing away from Kel.

  “Please, Mr. Tesla,” Kel said, smiling, “don’t make me kill you.”

  Tesla spun about on his heel and fired his electric ray gun at one of the guards peering out over a balcony ledge on the wall of rock. The electric ray of Tesla’s gun struck the guard in a blaze of fire and lightning bolts. The guard screamed and toppled from the balcony and down out of sight into the dark space of the cavern below. Instantly, other guards appeared from balconies and openings in the dis- tant cavern walls; they all took aim at the aeronauts and fired. Both bullets and rays of electricity exploded on the bridge. Tesla fired his ray gun at the cavern walls and ran back toward the domed tower. In an instant, the other aeronauts were running behind him, firing their ray guns at the guards peer- ing out from the distant walls of rock. Tesla reached the entrance of the domed tower and went through it. Ade came in behind him, then Lillie, and then Houdini who stopped at the door and fired back at a guard running toward them on the bridge. The ray of electricity from Houdini’s gun struck the guard in an electrical explosion, and the guard was thrown back off his feet and landed on the ground, dead. Far at the other end of the bridge, Houdini could see Kel standing with his feet spread apart, and he seemed to be laughing. Tesla glanced at the Master Crystal pulsing upon the pedestal attached to the electrified platform and knew he had no time to find the conduit of power and cut its circuit. “We must draw all the guards away from here,” Tesla said. “Make your way back to the cavern entrance.”

  “What are you going to do?” Ade asked.

  “Lead them on a merry chase through the bowels of the planet,” Tesla said. “Now go.”

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  Lillie, Ade, and Houdini ran out the door that opened on to the bridge that lead back to the way they had come from the cave entrance. Tesla turned around and saw guards coming on the run from another bridge to his left. He turned and ran out the door on his right, and crossed the bridge that stretched ahead to a wall of rock.

  As Lillie, Ade, and Houdini approached the end of the bridge upon which they ran, guards sprang out from the arched entrance to the wall of rock and fired upon them. “Up!” Ade shouted to Lillie and Houdini, and the three of them rose up over the heads of the guards and flew away into the cavern as rays of electricity shot past them in their f light.


  Tesla had made his way to one of the many balconies overlooking the cavern, and he now ran along its length, firing at guards stationed upon bridges below and above him. He reached the end of the balcony, f lew up over its railing, and then dropped down into the open space beyond. Tesla fell ten stories, and then slowed his descent, flew on forward, and landed on a bridge. Before he could be seen by any guard, he ran across the bridge and into an opening in the cavern wall. Tesla came upon an elevator, entered it, and threw a switch. The elevator began to descend rapidly. At intervals, through the window of the elevator door, he could see f lashes of the cavern below. The elevator came to a stop, its door slid open, and Tesla stepped out. He was now in a narrow tunnel with a f light of stairs leading further downward. He took the stairs, and descended sixteen f lights. At the fif- teenth landing, Tesla heard voices and footsteps coming from above. He stopped for only an instant to listen. The footsteps were descending to- ward him. Tesla ran down the last f light and there he entered a tunnel cut roughly into the solid volcanic rock. He walked slowly for about one hun- dred yards and then stopped. He saw guards ahead approaching from the other end of the tunnel. He turned around. Guards were also approaching from behind him. Tesla turned forward again and began walking to meet the guards ahead, his ray-gun held level. Then Tesla came upon a metal-gated archway set into the stone tunnel on his right. He turned a switch on his ray-gun and fired at the gate. The metal instantly heated to incandescence, melted and vaporized away, leaving a gap- ing hole with red-hot edges. Tesla plunged through the red-hot hole, disappear- ing from sight of the guards. Tesla now found himself in a labyrinth of rock tunnels, a pitch-black, tomblike place lit only by the electric torch on his helmet. The labyrinth twisted and