The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

Tesla drives a harder bargain than I had reckoned. I am to pay him not eight but ten thousand dollars, a small fortune by any standards. It seems he sleeps on important matters just like ordinary men, and awoke this morning with the realisation that the eight thousand dollars would cover only the shortfall he was bearing before I arrived. My apparatus will cost more. Beside this, he has demanded that I pay him a goodly percentage in cash, and in advance. I have three thousand dollars I can produce in cash, and can raise another three with the bearer bonds I have brought with me, but the remainder will have to be sent from England.

  Tesla agreed promptly to the arrangement.

  Today he has quizzed me more closely about what I require of him. He is incurious about the magical effect I plan to achieve, but is concerned instead with practicalities. The size of the apparatus, the source of power for it, the weight it will need to be, the degree of portability required.

  I find myself admiring his analytical mind. Portability was one aspect I had not thought about at all, but of course this is a critical factor for a touring magician.

  He has already drawn up rough plans, and has banished me to Colorado Springs for two days, while he visits Denver to acquire the constituent parts.

  Tesla’s reaction to my project has finally convinced me of something that until now I have only suspected. Borden has not been to Tesla!

  I am learning about my old adversary. Through Olivia he was trying to misdirect me. His illusion uses the sort of flashy effects that ordinary people think are the power of electricity, but are in fact nothing more than flashy effects. He thought I would go on a wild-goose chase, while Tesla and I are actually confronting the heart of the hidden energy itself.

  But Tesla works slowly! I am anxious about the passage of time. Naïvely I had thought that once I commissioned Tesla it would be a matter of hours before he produced the mechanism I required. I see, by the abstracted expression he bears as he mutters to himself, that I have started a process of invention that might know no practical end. (In an aside, Mr Alley confirmed that Tesla sometimes worries at a problem for months.)

  I have firm bookings in England in October and November, and must be home well before the first of them.

  I have two idle days until Tesla returns, and so I suppose I might use the time to research train and ship timetables. I find that America, a country great in many things, is not good at providing such information.

  21st July 1900

  Tesla’s work apparently proceeds well. I am allowed to visit his laboratory every two days, and although I have seen something of the apparatus there has been no question yet of a demonstration. Today I found him tinkering with his research experiments. He seemed abstracted by them and was partly irritated and partly puzzled to see me.

  4th August 1900

  Violent thunderstorms have been playing around Pike’s Peak for three days, casting me into gloom and frustration. I know that Tesla will be involved with his own experiments, not with mine.

  The days are slipping by. I must be aboard the train out of Denver before the end of this month!

  8th August 1900

  Tesla told me on my arrival at the laboratory this morning that my apparatus was ready for demonstration, and in a state of great excitement I readied myself to see it. When it came to it, though, the thing refused to function, and after I had watched Tesla fiddling with some of the wiring for more than three hours I returned here to the hotel.

  I am told by the First Colorado Bank that more of my money should be available in a day or two. Perhaps that will spur Tesla to greater efforts.

  12th August 1900

  Another abortive demonstration today. I was disappointed by the outcome. Tesla seemed puzzled, claiming that his calculations could not be in error.

  The failure is briefly recorded. The prototype apparatus is a smaller version of his Coil, with the wiring arranged in a different fashion. After a prolonged lecture about the principles (none of which I understood, and which I soon came to realise was delivered by Tesla mainly for his own sake, a form of thinking aloud), Tesla produced a metal rod which he or Mr Alley had painted in a distinctive orange colour. He placed it on a platform, immediately beneath a kind of inverted cone of wiring. The apex of the cone was focused directly on the rod.

  When at Tesla’s instruction Mr Alley worked a large lever situated close by the original Coil, there was the noisy but now familiar outburst of arcing electrical discharge. Almost at once the orange rod was surrounded by blue-white fire, which snaked around it in a most intimidating way. (I, thinking of the illusion I wished to work on the stage, was quietly satisfied by the appearance of this.) The noise and incandescence built up quickly, and soon it seemed as if molten particles of the rod itself were splashing to the floor; that they were not was evidenced by the unchanged, unharmed appearance of the rod.

  After a few seconds Tesla waved his hands dramatically, Mr Alley threw back the control lever, the electricity instantly died away, and the rod was still in place.

  Tesla immediately became absorbed in the mystery, and, as has happened before, my presence was thereafter ignored. Mr Alley has recommended me to stay away from the laboratory for a few days, but I am acutely conscious of time running out. I wonder if I have sufficiently impressed this upon Mr Tesla?

  18th August 1900

  Today is notable less for a second failed demonstration than for the fact that Tesla and I have argued with some bitterness. This quarrel happened in the immediate aftermath of his machine’s failure to work, and so we were both keyed up, I with disappointment, Tesla with frustration.

  After the orange-painted rod had failed to move again, Tesla picked it up and offered it to me to hold. A few seconds before it had been bathed in radiant light, with sparks flying in every direction. I took it from him gingerly, expecting my fingers to be singed by it. Instead, it was cold. This is the odd thing: it was not just cool, in the sense that it had not been heated, but actively cold, as if it had been surrounded by ice. I hefted the rod in my hand.

  ‘Any more failures like this, Mr Angier,’ Tesla said, in a friendly enough voice, ‘and I might be obliged to give you that as a souvenir.’

  ‘I shall take it,’ I replied. ‘Although I should prefer to take with me what I came here to buy.’

  ‘Given enough time I shall move the Earth.’

  ‘Time is what I do not have much of,’ I riposted, tossing the rod to the floor. ‘And it is not the Earth I wish to move. Nor is it this metal stick.’

  ‘Then pray name your preferred object,’ Tesla said, with sarcasm. ‘I shall concentrate on that instead.’

  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.

  ‘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 to discover that the anger that had 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 rematerialisation 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.

  When I returned to the laboratory I went straight to my portmanteau and pulled out the iron rod I had found beside the path yesterday evening. I held it up for Tesla to see.

  ‘Your experimental object, I do believe?’ I said.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  I told him where I had found it, and when. He hurried across to the apparatus where its twin was lying, discarded in favour of the unlucky cockroaches. He held the two together and Alley and I stood with him, marvelling at their identical appearance.

  ‘These marks, Mr Angier!’ Tesla breathed in awe, lightly fingering a crisscross patch neatly etched into the metal. ‘I made them so that I might prove by identification that this object had been transmitted through the aether. But—’

  ‘It has made a facsimile of itself!’ Alley said.

  ‘Where did you say you found this, sir?’ Tesla demanded.

  I led the two men outside and explained, pointing down the mountain. Tesla stared in silent thought.

  Then he said, ‘I need to see the actual place! Show me!’ To Alley he said, ‘Bring the theodolite, and some measuring tape! As soon as you can!’

  And with that he set off down the precipitous path, clutching me by my upper arm, imploring me to show him the exact location of the find. I assumed I would be able to lead him straight to it, but as we moved further down the track I was no longer so sure. The huge trees, the broken rocks, the scrubby forest-floor vegetation, all looked much alike. With Tesla gesticulating at me and gabbling in my ear it was almost impossible to concentrate.

  I eventually came to a particular turn in the path where the grass grew long, and I paused before it. Alley, who had been trotting after us, soon caught us up and under Tesla’s directions set up the theodo
lite. A few careful measurements were enough for Tesla to reject the place.

  After about half an hour we had agreed on another likely site. It was exactly to the east of the laboratory, although of course a substantial distance beneath it. When we took into account the steepness of the mountainside, and the fact that the iron rod would have bounced and rolled on hitting the ground, it did seem that this was a likely position in which it would end up. Tesla was evidently satisfied, and he was deep in thought as we walked back up the mountain to his laboratory.

  I too had been thinking, and as soon as we were inside once more I said, ‘May I make a suggestion?’

  ‘I am already greatly indebted to you, sir,’ Tesla replied. ‘Say what you will!’

  ‘Since you are able to calibrate the device, rather than simply aim your experiments into the air to the east of us, could you not send them a shorter distance? Perhaps across the laboratory itself, or outside to the area surrounding the building?’

  ‘We evidently think alike, Mr Angier!’

  In all the times I had been with him I had never seen Tesla so cheerful, and he and Alley set to work immediately. Once again I became supernumerary, and went to sit silently at the rear of the laboratory. I have long since fallen into the habit of taking some food with me to the laboratory (Tesla and Alley have irregular feeding habits when engrossed by their work) and so I ate the sandwiches made for me by the staff at the hotel.

  After a longer and more tedious period than I can describe here, Tesla finally said, ‘Mr Angier, I believe we are ready.’

  And so it was that I went to examine the apparatus, for all the world like a member of a theatre audience invited on stage to inspect a magician’s cabinet, and with Tesla I went outside and established beyond doubt that his designated target area was empty of any metal rods.

  When he inserted the experimental rod, and manipulated his lever, a most satisfactory bang heralded successful completion of the experiment. The three of us rushed outside, and sure enough, there on the grass, was the familiar orange-painted iron rod.