Wardenclyffe

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Well, firstly, you must realize that three incidents form an extremely limited sample.”

  He tapped his cane impatiently on the concrete base. “Ja-ja. That is obvious and something I already know.”

  “And secondly, the three phenomena in no way resemble each other. A building flaking away and vanishing into the air bears no similarity to a fish kill. Both are bizarre but both left behind concrete evidence. As for the pool incident, we have only the victim’s testimony and no evidence that it ever truly happened.”

  “A link, Charles. Do you think there is a link?”

  “The people I spoke to think so.”

  “Your opinion, Charles.”

  “Certainly there is a correlation between the incidents and the activation periods of the tower. As to whether the tower caused them…”

  “You cannot say. I completely understand. A correlation is good enough for me.”

  So saying, he walked back to the plant, leaving me standing under the tower, wondering.

  A correlation is good enough for me…whatever did he mean by that? Good enough? What good could he find in that sort of correlation?

  OCTOBER 12, 1937

  “But let’s leave Wardenclyffe in the past where it belongs,” Tesla said as we dominated our bench, discouraging anyone else from claiming a corner. “How is your life, Charles? What have you accomplished with all that potential?”

  I thought about that. I’d often asked myself the same question.

  “‘Accomplished’? In objective terms, not much. In personal terms…everything.”

  “Everything?”

  He still could not seem to take his eyes off my mustache, so I stroked it and said, “Well, I grew this.” As he laughed and winced again, I added, “In all seriousness, I have managed to stay employed despite the depression. I have—”

  I stopped because of the way he was staring at my mustache.

  “It looks so real.”

  “It is.” I leaned toward him. “Touch it. Go ahead.”

  He ran a hesitant finger over it, then snatched it away. “It is real!”

  “I told you it was. Why are you so shocked?”

  “Because all this time I thought…I thought…”

  “Thought what?”

  “Don’t be angry with me: I thought you were a woman disguised as a man.”

  His words did not anger me in the least, but they certainly jolted me. Looking into his eyes I knew the time for truth had arrived.

  “You’re almost right. I am not a woman disguised as a man. I am a man born into a woman’s body who has garbed that body to reflect my true nature.”

  “How…what?” Confusion reigned in his expression, and undoubtedly in his thoughts as well. “I don’t understand. How does this happen?”

  “I wish I knew. You want my true life story? I once told you I was born in Manchester in 1878—that much is true. But I was born Charlotte Atkinson. I had a female body but not once in my life can I remember feeling feminine or wanting to live as my mother did. I wanted my father’s life. So after my mother died and I sold the cottage, I boarded a train to Liverpool as Charlotte and stepped off as Charles. You know the rest.”

  “But your mustache!”

  Now I knew why he’d been staring. How could a woman grow a mustache?

  “Testosterone,” I said. “A synthesized form was developed two years ago and I’ve been injecting myself three times a week. I used to shave just to remove the peach fuzz. Now I must shave. And I love it—the favorite part of my daily ablutions.”

  How wonderful to reveal myself to this man I revered and owed so much.

  He shook his head. “Such a challenge you set for yourself.”

  If he only knew…

  “It isn’t as if I have a choice. It is something I must do. I have lived my entire adult life as a man, and whatever I have accomplished in life is because I’ve lived as a man.”

  “You have a brilliant mind.”

  “I don’t know about brilliant, but I know I have a good one. Yet MIT would not have accepted me had I applied as a woman. They accepted a rare woman back then, but only if she could live nearby with her family. As a female orphan from England, I’d have been rejected out of hand, despite my high test score. Remember, women didn’t even have the right to vote until 1920. And you—would you have taken me on if I’d approached you as a woman?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. I have always thought women the intellectual equals of men and that they would someday startle the world with their innovations. But the presence of a woman would have been a terrible distraction to the workers, catastrophically disruptive.”

  Something didn’t fit here…

  “When did you discover my secret?”

  “During your first year.”

  So early?

  “How?”

  “I went to your quarters in the loft to see if we might make you more comfortable. I found a bloody rag.”

  “Ah…my monthly.” The bane of my transformation.

  “I didn’t know that then. I thought you might have cut yourself. But there was so much blood…and your face was so hairless…I began to keep track of the times you didn’t look well, and then I would check, and I’d find blood.”

  I’d worked so hard at hiding my monthlies. I might have been a man in a woman’s body, but a woman’s body has undeniable and indomitable rhythms, irrespective of the soul inhabiting it. At age fifty-nine now, they are a thing of the past, but back then I had to sneak out at night once a month and bury the bloody rags in the field far beyond the tower. Some of those nights were bitter cold and the ground hard as stone.

  “So if you knew,” I said, “why didn’t you sack me?”

  He gave one of his Serbian shrugs. “You may deny your brilliance, but I do not. In everyone’s eyes you were a man—a very boyish looking man, yes, but you functioned as a man. That made all the difference. As a woman among them, you would distract the workers; they would look at you and think of sex instead of their tasks. They’d be posturing instead of working. But day to day they looked upon you as a man and so you caused no disruption. As for myself, I was and am celibate, so the truth did not affect me.”

  “Weren’t you angry that I’d deceived you?”

  He gave a short laugh. “I suppose I was too confused to be angry. I did not understand the how nor the why of the way you were living—and I still do not—but I had come to know you and like you and trust you. I knew you truly shared my dream. I wanted to keep you for your mind and your enthusiasm and your dedication, but mostly because I did not want to crush your dream of being a part of worldwide wireless. So I decided I would keep your secret and that you would stay.”

  I blinked away tears that threatened to spill. I loved this man.

  “You kept the secret extremely well,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I shall forever revere you for that.”

  Never comfortable with emotion, he waved off my gratitude. “You deserve all you’ve achieved.”

  I hadn’t told him the rest of it.

  “You didn’t let me finish before. I have a wife and a daughter—”

  Eyes wide, he grabbed my forearm. “A child? But how?”

  “I married a wonderful woman. I love her and she loves me. No more need be said. Our daughter was adopted as an infant and we treasure her. I am, in every sense, the Man of the House.”

  Yes…a very unconventional man living a very conventional life.

  He slapped his thighs. “Well then, you have answered my question. You have gotten what you wanted from life.”

  “Except world wireless.”

  He sighed. “Yes. Except that.”

  “And so I rest my case and say again: Whatever I have accomplished in life is because I’ve lived as a man. To which I must add: And because I met you.”

  “But then,” he said with a frown, “had you not met me, you would have been spared the horrors of Wardenclyffe.”

  I could not argue with
that…

  1904

  We accomplished very little for the remainder of the year and not until spring did we finally have the new generator installed and running. Much of the early delays involved the Septimus Order. Apparently, despite Drexler’s enthusiastic endorsement, not all of the Council of Seven supported the idea of risking such a huge amount of money on an unproven technology. At least that was how Drexler explained the delay to us. I had a feeling it went deeper.

  He would train Council members out to Wardenclyffe to see the tower and the shaft first hand. Invariably I was tasked with conducting the tour. And there I became aware of a puzzling trend: the Council members seemed more interested in the anomalous phenomena that correlated to activating the tower than the possibilities inherent in worldwide wireless.

  A number of them wished for a demonstration of the tower before committing to the investment, but without their investment we had no generator, and without a generator we could demonstrate nothing.

  Finally wiser heads prevailed and Drexler announced that the money was ready to flow as soon as Tesla signed a “simple and straightforward” formal agreement. A major sticking point turned out to be the Council’s insistence that all funds flow through Drexler. This naturally upset George Scherff who had functioned for years as Tesla’s accountant and bookkeeper. Drexler apologized but said the Council had been firm on this point because it allowed them to monitor expenditures. Scherff wasn’t cut out entirely: He would receive a lump sum every week to cover payroll.

  On and on it went, one delay after another, bogged in minutiae like property taxes and such. After much searching about we secured a generator with the power Tesla required. We repaired the relationship with the coal supplier and fired her up. All connections had to be retested. Once that was done, we were ready for a low-wattage experimental run.

  In all that time, I held to a careful routine that would keep me useful and yet unobtrusive. Since boarding the freighter in Liverpool, I had pitched my voice low until it became second nature to me. I’d also perfected my breast-binding technique until I could do it quickly, without thinking. Fortunately I had a slim build and was anything but busty. But I always made sure my shirts were loose fitting, and I dressed in multiple layers when I could—easy enough in the winter but a constant challenge in the warmer months. I wished for a way to permanently remove them but that was not an option.

  I was forever on guard against a slip. For years now the story of Murray Hall had haunted me. The scandal had broken in 1901 when I was still at MIT. A fixture in New York’s Tammany Hall politics for a quarter century, Murray Hall was discovered upon his death to be a woman. How humiliating. Was that the fate that awaited me?

  A nationwide uproar followed. After all, women weren’t even allowed to vote, let alone have a say in a powerful political machine. Born Mary Anderson in Scotland, she’d arrived in America wearing her dead brother’s clothes.

  The parallels terrified me. I could not afford a slip-up. I needed Wardenclyffe. I belonged here…

  …because I belonged nowhere else.

  At night, as I lay awake waiting for sleep, when I wasn’t worrying about exposure, I worried about my future. After Wardenclyffe, whether we succeeded or failed, what lay ahead for me? Would I ever find someone who could accept me as I am, who would stand by me and allow me to be me? I could weather the loneliness and isolation now, but not forever. I would need someone to share my life and I’d begun to despair of ever finding that someone.

  The challenge of changing the world would be my companion for now. And all Wardenclyffe needed to get back into gear was a foggy day—plentiful in spring, summer, and fall, but not so much in winter.

  “I don’t see why we have to wait,” Drexler said for perhaps the hundredth time.

  He had become a fixture at the plant, spending many of his days here. He’d done away with his driver and taken over the wheel of his four-seater touring car, ferrying Tesla, Scherff, and himself back and forth from their Port Jefferson quarters.

  And for perhaps the hundredth time, George Scherff explained that a nighttime display attracted too much attention—the flashes were visible up and down the Sound, and all the way across to New Haven and Bridgeport.

  “What’s wrong with attention?” Drexler said.

  “The displays frighten people,” Scherff told him. “And frightened people do not act rationally. They might shut us down. Do you want that?”

  Of course he didn’t. But that wouldn’t stop him from asking again before too long.

  Eventually a warm front pushed through, and by ten A.M. on March 9, 1904, nature provided us the means to muffle the tower’s flashes.

  The workers were given the day off. Drexler insisted on being present. And how could anyone say no? None of this would be happening without him.

  This time, I was assigned the task of throwing the switch. When I reached the others standing by the rear door, the show had already begun. The cupola was lost to view in the fog above but blue-white light flashes lit the mist. The shaft was flashing, too, with discharges from the Tesla coil below.

  Tesla picked up a ceramic cylinder with a fifty-watt light bulb attached to one end and two copper prongs protruding from the other. A small induction coil connected them in the center. I’d helped put it together.

  He waited to let the tower warm up a little more, then walked to a patch of dead grass off to the left and stuck the pair of prongs into the ground. He stepped back and we all watched.

  Slowly, the filament inside the bulb began to glow, growing brighter and brighter until fully lit.

  Drexler watched slack jawed while Tesla only smiled and nodded—he’d seen this before. Not so Scherff and I, however, and the two of us clapped and laughed. I was so filled with wonder and delight that I had to rush back inside to hide sudden tears.

  It worked, it worked, it worked!

  “Very well,” Tesla said. “This is a low-power experiment. Let us see how far we can go.”

  I’d composed myself by then, so I hurried outside. I knew what was expected of me.

  I plucked the makeshift light fixture from the ground and started walking toward the tower. I held it aloft, watching the bulb to see if it might begin to glow but knowing it would not. It had not been designed for aerial reception. Still, one could always hope.

  I held it high with no result until I’d passed the tower, then dropped it to my side and kept walking. When I‘d gone exactly fifty paces, I stopped and looked back. I could still see a vague outline of the base of the tower, and faint flashes above and from below. But the plant beyond had been swallowed entirely.

  I thrust the prongs into the ground and waited. Once again the filament glowed and the bulb lit to full power. I pulled out a pea whistle and blew it. Seemingly out of nowhere came an echoing response from Scherff’s whistle.

  Plucking the bulb from the ground, I walked on and soon was moving through a featureless gray limbo. The sun was shining somewhere above but you couldn’t prove it by me. The tower had disappeared behind, and only blank mist lay ahead. It didn’t bother me. Well, perhaps a little. I made monthly trips out here in the dark with a spade to bury my bloody rags, but at least then I could use a light in one of the plant windows to guide me back. Right now I could not be sure of my direction. I assumed I was traveling north toward the Sound, but that was merely an assumption.

  Another fifty paces and I stopped for another test of the bulb. Once again it lit. I blew my whistle and waited for Scherff’s response. And waited. Hearing nothing, I blew again. Still no response, so I blew as hard as I could. Nothing.

  Was all the moisture in the air swallowing the sound?

  No matter, really. We’d anticipated some of these difficulties in the fog, and so the plan was for me to keep walking and testing until the bulb stopped lighting or until I reached the Sound. If the former, I was to leave the bulb where it failed to glow, and we’d take measurements after the weather cleared. If the latter, I was to turn aro
und and make my way back.

  Another fifty paces, another ground insertion, another light up. I went on and on, repeating the procedure again and again. The tower was operating on low power and yet look how far I’d come with no sign of weakening. Despite the lack of response, I dutifully blew the whistle each time. But the last time I blew it, the blast of a bloody foghorn damn near knocked me off my feet. Although it echoed from all over, it seemed to have originated behind me.

  I stalked in that direction and within twenty paces reached the waterline.

  Above, the fog still blocked the sun, but down at the surface of the Sound the mist had broken into drifting bands of gray. I saw a trawler steaming west from the Atlantic, smoke pouring from her stack as she headed home from deep-sea fishing. As it chugged into a particularly thick bank, a crewman spotted me and waved. I waved back just before the fog closed around it.

  As it disappeared from sight an unusual churning disturbed the surface. I thought it might be the trawler’s wake but instead of dissipating it increased in violence.

  A scream from the fog startled me. A man’s scream—whether pain or terror I couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.

  And then something cold and wet slammed against my chest, knocking me back. And then again—another! All around me fish were leaping from the water to land on the sand and flop around. For a moment it seemed to be raining fish. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

  I stood at the waterline, gasping, shaking. The turbulence had died. And the boat, the trawler…where was it? It never emerged from the fog bank. Even if I couldn’t see the boat itself, it would be leaving a wake. Yet the surface lay as smooth and still as a mirror.

  I shook off my paralysis and began tossing the stranded fish back into the water, but gave up after a while. Too bloody many of them.

  The old Gypsy woman’s words came back to me then:

  “You are thinking fish leaping toward something? Look again. See how far they jump—even bottom dwellers. No, were running from something… Something scare fish—scare so much are leaping onto dry land to escape.”