by Sesh Heri
Professor May closed an electrical knife-switch mounted on the wall. Tesla knew what the switch controlled, for he had used it many times before himself, long ago in the early 1890s. The switch controlled a series of motors on top of the building that, when activated, would roll back the rooftop, exposing the entire factory room below to the sky. This is what now began happening: the roof of the building began sliding back to reveal the blue sky.
“There is your way out,” Professor May said, “straight up. Straight up into the sky!”
Tesla stood up, looking up to the sky beyond the edges of the building’s rooftop.
In the next instant a brilliant point of light appeared in the blue and rapidly expanded to a shimmering, silver-white circle. In another moment, the circle became a solid, silver disc, filling the sky. Then, in yet another moment, it was so large that it cast a shadow down into the room of the factory, darkening the whole place.
And then the disc was descending down through the rooftop, throwing sparks of reflected sunlight down upon the interior brick walls of the factory.
Tesla could now see that the disc was some 25 feet in diameter, flat on the bottom and domed on the top, like an inverted bowl. The surface of the disc was shiny silver and featureless. The outline of a doorway on its surface began to slide back. Out of the threshold of the opening door, a boarding ramp slid out, touched the floor of the factory, and the disc stabilized its wobble where it floated several feet in mid-air.
“Where is it from?” Tesla asked.
“It was sent from what we call Site Y,” Professor May said.
“Site Y?” Tesla asked.
“That is correct,” Professor May said. “My boss is at Site Y. He’s waiting for you and he doesn’t like to wait.”
“You expect me to get in that thing?” Tesla asked.
“You can walk up that ramp,” Professor May said, “or be carried up it.”
Tesla looked over to Gilgo the clown who already had his gas tube exposed outside his sleeve.
“No,” Tesla said, holding up his hand, “no more gas.”
“Then get on board!” Professor May ordered. “Get up the ramp!”
“To the Egress?” Tesla asked.
“Yes,” Professor May said. “To the Egress up the ramp— and then— straight up!”
“Up to Site Y,” Tesla said.
“Yes,” Professor May said. “Eventually.”
Tesla looked about at the human menagerie, then turned and slowly walked up the ramp. Professor May followed behind him. Then up the ramp came in succession: Alayna, Kel-Kar, Gilgo the clown, and the circus usher.
When they all got inside the disc, the boarding ramp automatically slid back into the craft and the door silently slid shut. Tesla and all the others stood in a circular control room made of metal bulkheads, floor, and ceiling. A number of red and green lights flashed on panels around the room. Tesla did not bother to look at these, but kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
“How long is our trip?” Tesla asked.
“Fifteen minutes,” Professor May said.
“Are we to voyage on this planet, or to another?” Tesla asked.
“Oh,” Professor May said, “this planet, definitely. We are only going to Site Y.”
“Why is it called Site Y?” Tesla asked.
“I suppose I can tell you now that we are airborne,” Professor May said. “The boss gave our city that name.”
“City?” Tesla asked.
“Yes,” Professor May said. “Site Y is a small city of sorts. About a thousand of us there. I wouldn’t call it a town, because it has all the amenities of a city. It is a culture center. A place of science and art. It is almost a country unto itself.”
“But why the name Site Y?” Tesla asked.
“I am getting to that,” Professor May said with irritation. “It is called Site Y because it is located at the juncture of two mountain ranges that form a ‘Y’ upon the landscape— a great symbol of the mysterious forking of the ways, just as we at Site Y have had a forking of the ways with the rest of mankind.”
“What are the two mountain ranges?” Tesla asked.
“The Andes and the Appalachians,” Professor May said.
“That is not possible,” Tesla said. “The Andes are in South America and the Appalachians are in North America.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Professor May said. “There is a range of mountains in Venezuela that veer off the main Andes chain and point to the northeast. Millions of years ago, when North and South America were one land mass, that northeastward veering range of mountains was the southernmost extension of the Appalachian chain. When North and South America parted ways and opened up the Gulf of Mexico, that southernmost part of the Appalachians went along with South America. So, you see, that mountain range down there in Venezuela is the Appalachians— the southernmost part of the chain— and it forms a ‘Y’ with the Andes. There was a lot of stress on those two ranges when North and South America slowly pulled apart, and that stress formed a volcano. Well, that was all long ago. North and South America are completely separated now and that volcano is dormant— and that’s where my boss built his secret city— in that dormant volcano— at the juncture where the two mountain chains form a ‘Y’— Site Y.”
“Your boss discovered this?” Tesla asked.
“Oh, no,” Professor May said. “That was one of our associates. You’ll meet him, too. He’s down there at Site Y.”
“What is this associate’s name?” Tesla asked.
“I cannot really tell you,” Professor May said, “because I don’t know his name myself. I only know him by his pen name.”
“Well,” Tesla asked, “what is that?”
Professor May replied, “Fulcanelli.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Meeting of Remarkable Men
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
— Carl Jung
The silver disc carrying Nikola Tesla, Professor May and the Professor’s human menagerie had risen from the rooftop of the Salet Boiler Works in New Jersey and had continued ascending in a vertical direction into the clear, blue sky at a tremendous speed. In seconds it had pierced the highest level of earth’s atmosphere and entered outer space. There in the blackness, the silver disc could increase its speed far faster than what had been possible in the friction-inducing atmosphere of earth. The disc could also more easily propagate an oscillating electromagnetic field that would absorb all forms of radar-like beams that might seek out its presence, whether those beams were propagated by men of Earth or Mars. The disc was being piloted automatically by pre-programmed on-board computing machines.
As the disc sped through outer space with the blue and white mass of the Earth shifting below it, Tesla and Professor May continued their conversation inside the craft.
“Fulcanelli,” Tesla said. “I have seen that name before.”
“Where?” Professor May asked.
“I have seen it,” Tesla said. “That is all that I will say about it.”
“So you know of him,” Professor May said.
“He is an alchemist,” Tesla said. “People are looking for him.”
“Yes,” Professor May said, “but they will not find him.”
Tesla looked up at Professor May, and, in doing so, saw that all the members of the human menagerie were removing their costumes. Alayna pulled away on her Pocahontas costume and it unsnapped, revealing that she was wearing close-fitting tan overalls underneath. The circus usher had removed his coat and Tesla could see that underneath his uniform he had on the same kind of tan overalls that Alayna was wearing. Gilgo the clown pulled off his costume, once again revealing the same kind of tan overalls underneath.
Alayna opened a bin in the bulkhead of the craft and the human menagerie began dropping their costumes into it. Kel-Kar stood motionless.
“What about him?” Tesla asked, n
odding toward Kel-Kar.
“Ah,” Professor May said. “That’s not a costume he’s wearing. That’s his real clothes— his formal imperial wardrobe, you might say. You see, Kel-Kar is a real Martian.”
“And the others?” Tesla asked.
“Yes, Mr. Tesla,” Professor May said, “the others are real Martians, too.”
Tesla looked back over to the human menagerie. Gilgo the clown, who had still been wearing his mask, now pulled it off, revealing the face of a man with marble-white skin. He was wearing a surgical mask over his nose and mouth. Gilgo pulled away his surgical mask, revealing a smiling mouth. Tesla noticed that Gilgo’s irises were pink.
“Gilgo is a Martian,” Professor May said, “though not a royal.”
Tesla looked over to Alayna and the circus usher.
“They, too,” Professor May said.
Alayna and the circus usher both reached up to their faces and pulled at the skin of their foreheads. Their flesh puckered, pulled away, and then for an instant both Alayna’s and the circus usher’s heads seemed to lift off their shoulders, but in the next instant Tesla could see that what seemed to be their heads were only masks. The masks came up and away, revealing underneath Alayna and the circus worker’s real heads— the heads of bald, white-skinned Martians. It was obvious to Tesla that Alayna was a woman, but still bald, skin marble-white, and eyes a shining pink. The other Martian who had been disguised as a circus usher was also white-skinned, but, to Tesla’s surprise, he saw that this Martian’s eyes were not pink— but a dark brown.
“He doesn’t have pink eyes,” Tesla blurted out.
“He’s half earth man,” Professor May said. “His name is Lazlo. His father was a Martian. His mother was from Earth.
“I have heard of such ones,” Tesla said.
“On your Iowa farm?” Professor May asked.
“We’ll drop the Iowa farm,” Tesla said.
“Good,” Professor May said. “Never liked that Iowa farm anyway.”
Tesla said, “Such hybrids as Lazlo here are usually employed in counterfeiting operations on earth.”
“Indeed they are,” Professor May said. “And you’ve pegged Lazlo exactly. He was born and bred to counterfeit Federal Reserve Notes for the Martians. His specialty was the fifty dollar bill, but he was good at all the denominations. A very versatile talent, Lazlo has. That’s how he and I met. That’s how I got involved in all this. I had left New York in 1928 over some financial difficulties. I had created several financial balloons under several aliases and those balloons were about to burst. Several large checks I had kited were about to crash land. I skipped town and did a fairly good disappearing act. The crash of ’29 helped a bit in obscuring my trail. I resurfaced in El Paso, Texas in 1930 and that’s where I met and became involved with Lazlo who was working very hard making money— you know, literally making money. I got in business with him before I figured out that he wasn’t an ordinary guy. When he finally told me that he came from Mars, I just didn’t believe him, but I thought: however you want to play the game! Later on, when other things happened, I finally realized that he really was from Mars! That just floored me for about a minute and a half. Then I just laughed. Just laughed. There was a joke on me and the whole human race! Well, Lazlo and I did a lot of business together, and from what I made on all the charitable contributions on our deal I was able to finance my researches with KA energy. In 1931, I made my first breakthrough by achieving a teleportation of an object between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. By 1934, I was teleporting people. The Martians were very interested in my work, but I kept everything close to vest. It was soon after I began the human teleportation experiments that Lazlo and I were apprehended by Majestic Seven agents working with the Secret Service. They had been watching us for months, giving us enough rope to hang ourselves, and we did. We hung ourselves out to dry. We were facing a long sentence in a secret maximum security prison created for just such folk as Lazlo and me. We heard that a number of Martians were already incarcerated there. I did not relish the idea of incarceration. I had already done a short amount of time in Sing Sing. It was not a pleasant memory, although I was released early for good behavior. You could say I was highly motivated to cooperate with Majestic Seven. Lazlo, too, in his own way was motivated. And so, both of us cooperated fully with Majestic Seven— cooperated with enthusiasm.”
“Of what did this cooperation consist?” Tesla asked.
“We were politely asked to become double agents,” Professor May said, “to spy on the Martians, the very people for whom we had only earlier been toiling so diligently.”
“And so you spied,” Tesla said.
“Not at first,” Professor May said. “We first had to be trained in the art of double agentry. For that, we were sent to school to attend a crash-course conducted by the world’s greatest double agent.”
“And who was that?” Tesla asked.
“That was the man to whom I refer to as ‘the Boss.’” Professor May said. “The world’s greatest double agent was our Boss. He had the whole world fooled. He had his family fooled. Maybe he even had his own self fooled a little, he was that good. The Boss has the talent of what I call the Sincere Lie. He has a sincere, almost sentimental belief in his lies. He will fight for his lies, fight for the integrity of his lies— maybe even die for his lies. Think about it. Have you ever known anyone like that? A man who could lie to your face, steal the shirt off your back, put it on his own back, wear it with pride— and then self-righteously proclaim that the shirt was his own and that he’d been wearing it all of the time? Have you ever known anyone like that?”
“Once,” Tesla said, “only once in my life I knew a man like that. He was a pretender. A puffer. A gas bag— a donkey. But…he is dead now.”
“What a eulogy!” Professor May exclaimed. “Then you have an idea. You know what my boss is like. I’ve learned a lot from him about a great many things. He is the only man I have ever known of whom I can honestly say that I have admired greatly. He is a doer— but also a seer. And I’ll admit it to you and warn you that he’ll get you for sure if you don’t watch out. But I only say that because I’m pretty sure that he won’t get you. I’m pretty sure that he’ll be able to use you, but he won’t get you, he won’t own you. I’m pretty sure of that because I believe you are a fair match for him.”
“Why?” Tesla asked.
“Because,” Professor May said, “you’re a pretty good liar yourself, when you need to be. Like the Iowa farm. You tell me a lie that I know is a lie, a lie that plays my own words back on me, my words about me being from Iowa. I guess you figured out that I’ve never set foot in Iowa and you decided to stick me in the ribs with that one.
“You have never been in Iowa,” Tesla said, “but I do detect a faint trace of German in your speech.”
Professor May smiled faintly, and said, “Actually, it’s Pennsylvania Dutch. All my forebears were Pennsylvania Dutch. You have a good ear. Very good. Yes, you’ll do all right. Just don’t try to come out on top with the Boss. Just go along with his program. Just do like he asks and keep your own thoughts to yourself. Then you’ll do all right. Otherwise—“
The lights on the bulkhead of the craft blinked off and the door slid open.
“Well,” Professor May said, “already! We’re here!”
“Site Y,” Tesla said.
“That’s right,” Professor May said. “Site Y.”
The silver disc had just dropped vertically from outer space down toward the surface of the Earth where below lay the conjunction of the Andes and the ancient Appalachian Mountains. High upon the crest of the conjunction, a black cinder cone jutted from the snow. The disc had plummeted through the mouth of this volcano and then paused above its floor of lava. The floor of the volcano broke apart and slid open, revealing a yawning, black void below. The disc descended through the opening and landed upon a cavern floor one thousand feet below. This main cavern— some two thousand feet wide by one thousand feet high�
� was the port of exit and entry to Site Y.
As Tesla emerged from the disc craft and looked about, he could see several other disc crafts ranged out along the floor of the cavern. Far beyond the discs rose a large structure, like the metal framework for a multi-story steel-framed building.
“That’s the ship that will go to the stars,” Professor May said, “if all goes according to plan.”
Tesla turned and looked at Professor May, who added, “It will soon be finished when we attach the outer hull. Our foundry is working on it now. Come along, and I’ll take you to the Boss.”
Professor May went down the ramp and Tesla followed him. The human menagerie came out of the saucer craft behind Tesla. They all got to the floor of the cavern.
Professor May waved a hand of dismissal, and said, “To your stations. The Prince and I will take Mr.Tesla to see the Boss.”
“What about me?” Alayna asked.
“You go with Lazlo and Gilgo,” Professor May said. “This meeting is high policy. Not for your ears, young lady.”
“Go,” Kel-Kar said to Alayna.
The Martian woman bowed her head and turned away.
“This way, Mr. Tesla,” Professor May said. “Just a few steps to the elevator.”
Professor May walked forward. Tesla could see great stone arches in the wall of the cavern, each of the arches leading off into a mammoth tunnel outlined by a diminishing line of lights.
“An immense place,” Tesla said. “Your boss did not build all this.”
“My boss?” Professor May asked. “Very shortly he will be your boss as well.”
“Unlikely,” Tesla said.
“Likely or not,” Professor May said, “I believe he will be your Boss. As far as this place, you are correct. Most of it was not built by us. We found it ‘as is,’ you might say. Great tunnels leading off in every direction from this central cave room— some of them natural lava tubes, most of them artificial, cored out by engineers in long-ago ages of astounding antiquity.”
