Dry Ice (45 page)

She nodded. “It’s very good.”

“Any plans to get back into research or get on the lecture circuit?”

A shadow crossed her face. “I’m not making any plans, Nik, I’m just living in the present,” she said after a moment.

He drained the last of his cognac, then rested his hands on the table near hers. She glanced at them, then at his face, and slipped one of her hands over his. It was smooth and cool and a very good sign.

“How long will you be in Moscow?” he asked.

“I leave tomorrow.”

He could feel his eyebrows shoot up. “When did you get here?”

“This morning.” She looked at him for a long moment without talking, and Nik watched her smile flicker and fade and reappear. “How long are you staying?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow, too.”

“Are you flying through Paris?” she asked softly.

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Any chance you might be interested in taking a detour to Lyon and then driving for about two hours to visit a little town in the middle of the country that’s not even remotely a tourist destination and that doesn’t have a whole lot to offer except its own brand of rustic charm?”

“I could be persuaded,” he replied, feeling a grin steal over his face.

“How long could you stay?” She met his eyes, and let out a short laugh. “I suppose I should have asked you first if you’re married or—?”

“I’m emotionally, legally, and financially unencumbered and I can stay until you throw me out. Did I mention that I’m not teaching again until August?”

She began to laugh. Nik cupped her hand in both of his and brought it to his mouth, not so much to kiss it as to just make sure it was real. “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered, taking one of his hands away to signal for the bill.

“And go where?”

“Where are you staying?”

“The Savoy,” she said casually. “It’s nearby.”

And only the most expensive hotel in the city
. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he handed over his credit card to the waiter. As soon as the transaction was completed, he stood and pulled her to her feet.

“To the Savoy. We’ll have a nightcap in better surroundings than the last one we shared.”

She gave him a questioning glance.

“My room at the installation. Your first night there,” Nik added as they were handed their coats. He bundled her out the door and back into the cold, dark night. “It’s strange to think that you were only there for three nights.”

“Nik,” she said, laughing at his hurry. “Slow down. I know it’s cold, but the hotel is only a few blocks away.”

“I don’t want to spend any more time not looking at you than I have to,” he said. “I want to get warm and comfortable and be able to—no, forget that. This can’t wait.” He whirled her to the edge of the sidewalk and then into a darkened doorway. He rested his forehead against hers. “Do you remember what you said to me before you went out to the plane, Tess?” he demanded, his voice rough from both the cold air and the fire inside him. “About if we had half a chance?”

She nodded, her eyes bright, her smile getting wider.

“Did you mean it? That given half a chance—”

“I meant it, Nik,” she whispered. “That’s why I came here. To see if we still had half a chance.”

“We’ve got more than that, Tess. We’ve got the rest of our lives,” he said, and brought his lips to hers, kissing her until the door behind him opened and a rough Russian curse jolted them apart.

Tess laughed, slipped her arm through his, and said, “On second thought, Nik, let’s see if we can’t catch a cab back to the hotel.”

AUTHORS’ NOTE

Who was Nikola Tesla?

There is no greater or more interesting scientist than Nikola Tesla. When you add it all up—his voluminous body of work, amazing scientific discoveries, electrifying showmanship, and eccentric personality—he was the “mega science star” of all time. In his day, scientists were like rock stars and he was “The King.” Yes, there were other biggies, like Röentgen, Marconi, Sir Oliver Lodge, Hertz, Ampère, and that Edison guy, but Tesla, with his extreme height (he was over six feet tall) and even more gigantic personality, was astonishing.

Yet, now, Telsa is the unsung prophet of our electronic age. Without Nikola Tesla there would be no electricity as we know it, no power generation and transmission using alternating current, no radio or television, no ignition systems for cars and other vehicles, not even the remote control. To me, it’s terribly disappointing that his life and achievements have all but vanished from public awareness. It’s really a mystery to me why he has so vanished into the haze of the past. While I was researching and writing this book, I’d go to book signings and ask if anyone had heard of Nikola Tesla and usually no more than two hands were ever raised.

Tesla possessed a remarkable talent for charming and astonishing his admirers while at the same time totally enraging his critics. His peers held him in high esteem—he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Science in 1937. He did however have his harsh critics. Waldemar Kaempffert, science editor for
The New York Times
, branded him “an intellectual boa constrictor and a medieval practioner of black arts.”

Tesla could also display streaks of cruelty. He was disgusted by people who were overweight and did nothing to disguise this. When one of his secretaries, who, in his opinion, was too fat, awkwardly knocked something off a table, Tesla fired her despite her pleading. He had a favorite joke about two of his aunts; the center of the story was that they were sublimely ugly. Even great men have their flaws and Tesla clearly had several.

*   *   *

Tesla was also a very cool man about town. He was one of Manhattan’s social elite and a member of “the 400”—the most influential four hundred people in Manhattan high society (this group also included John Jacob Astor, Hamilton Fish, Jr., Peter Cooper Hewitt, Clement C. Moore, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and other notables from banking, industry, and the arts and sciences). He was also big-time friends with the writer Mark Twain, who was a frequent guest at Tesla’s lab when Tesla put on his famous light shows.

Tesla fancied himself as the best-dressed man on Fifth Avenue. John J. O’Neill, the Pulitzer Prize–winning science editor of the
New York Herald Tribune
and Tesla’s first biographer, said of him, “He was handsome of face, had a magnetic personality, but was quiet, almost shy; he was soft spoken, well educated and wore clothes well.”

His secretary of many years, Dorothy Skerritt, wrote of Tesla, “From under protruding eyebrows his deep-set, steel grey, soft, yet piercing eyes, seemed to read your innermost thoughts … his face glowed with almost ethereal radiance. His genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul.”

Although he was quite the social butterfly, he never formed a relationship with any of the ladies—many of whom in “the 400” found him quite handsome, including Anne Morgan, daughter of the famous Wall Street financier J. Pierpont Morgan. There’s been a good deal of speculation about Tesla’s private life in recent years, some of which was the background for Nik Forde’s history in
Dry Ice.

*   *   *

While acquainting myself with the life of Nikola Tesla, I visited the sites of his old haunts here in New York City: the locations of his old laboratories on 40th Street and on West Broadway (formally South 5th Avenue); the many swanky hotels in which he’d lived—the Pennsylvania, the McAlpin, the Maguery, the Waldorf Astoria, and the place where he died, the New Yorker. I was married in another of Tesla’s residences, the St. Regis Hotel. Tesla had a tremendous love for pigeons and somehow these luxury hotels allowed him to keep them with him!

I also went to Shoreham, Long Island, to look at the location of his ill-fated Wardenclyffe Tower. The building, minus the tower, still stands today. It was rather eerie to stand there and imagine Tesla, the supposed mad scientist, firing lightning bolts into the New York night. If you did that today, the EPA would sentence you to prison for eternity.

*   *   *

Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia to Serbian parents. His father was a minister of the Serbian Orthodox Church, a racial and religious minority at that time. Nikola came to America in 1884 and worked for Thomas Edison. He later became Edison’s most hated rival. Nice career choice, right?

Tesla’s crowning achievement was the invention of alternating current, A/C as we call it, the electricity we use today. He believed it was possible to wirelessly transmit electricity across the oceans using two towers, one on the East Coast of the United States and the other on the shores of England.

He also discovered wireless radio waves and invented radio. Exploring radio waves, he learned that radio waves of various frequencies could do many amazing and wondrous things, like shake a building down to its foundation (which he actually did). He proved that wireless transmission of extra low frequency waves (ELF) could shake the Earth to its core or affect the ionosphere of the planet, creating all types of phenomena. You could fry the electronics of an aircraft in flight … and you could make weather … which inspired
Dry Ice
.

*   *   *

Here’s a list of only a few of Tesla’s 250 patents:

The Rotating Magnetic Field

The Induction Motor

The AC Polyphase Power Distribution System

The Fundamental System of Wireless Communication (Legal Priority for the invention of Radio)

RF (radio frequency) Oscillators

Voltage Magnification by Standing Waves

Robotics

Logic Gates for Secure RF Communications

X-Rays

Ionized Gases

High Field Emission

Charged Particle Beams

Voltage Multiplication Circuitry

High Voltage Discharges

Lightning Protection

The Bladeless Turbine

VTOL aircraft

*   *   *

To me, Tesla was very cool because he played with electricity—and I do mean
played
—with millions of volts at a time! He amazed audiences at universities, science exhibitions, and World’s Fairs with light shows of various-colored fluorescent tubes.

In playing and experimenting with electricity, he was almost killed on more than one occasion! Yet each time he managed to pull a Harry Houdini and escape. Lightning would dance all about him, zap metal fragments that ricocheted around his lab, yet he escaped without a scratch.

In his autobiography, Tesla wrote about these phenomena, which he believed started when he was a child:

I was almost drowned, entombed, lost, and frozen. I had hairbreadth escapes from mad dogs, hogs, and other wild animals. I passed through dreadful diseases and met with all kinds of odd mishaps. I feel my preservation was not altogether accidental, but was indeed the work of divine power. An inventor’s endeavor is essentially life saving. Whether he harnesses forces, improves devices, or provides new comforts and conveniences, he is adding to the safety of our existence.

There’s no question that Tesla felt he was protected by the hands of God!

*   *   *

Hopefully for future meteorologists and inventive scientists, I’ve kindled a little interest in “mega science star” Nikola Tesla.

—B
ILL
E
VANS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First I want to thank my partner in this techno-weather crime, Marianna Jameson. I truly appreciate her hard work, her style of writing, her wit and charm. Those are the things we share the most, along with a sick sense of humor, which make us great partners. We have made three great books together and I want to thank her for making that happen.

Secondly I want to thank Margaret Cheney for her great work,
Tesla: Man Out of Time,
which I relied upon for a great amount of background on Tesla the man. I also want to thank the Tesla Memorial Society of New York for their help in providing information on Tesla’s life and times in New York City. They are trying to raise money to turn Tesla’s building at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, into a science museum. Hopefully this book will help raise awareness about Tesla and generate more money for their goal.

Thanks to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, for their kindness and help.

I want to thank Jerry E. Smith for his book
Weather Warfare
and for his take on Tesla and the HAARP Program.

I want to thank the greatest editor in the world, Melissa Singer at Tor. I am so proud to be your weatherman every day. Thank you for making our words “sing.” Thanks to Tom Doherty and the wonderful staff at Tor/Forge. I would especially like to thank Linda Quinton from Tor/Forge. I very much appreciate your wonderful support; you always show so much confidence in my work, which is a great feeling, and I thank you for your kindness and friendship.

I want to thank my wonderful wife, Dana, who has no problem telling me when the writing and my ideas stink. When she looks at me and politely says, “Okay, that’s … that’s okay,” I know the work is great. I want to thank my children, Maggie, William, Julia, and Sarah, for their patience when I shut the doors to the den. I love you with all my heart.

I especially want to thank Nikola Tesla for giving me a great book. It is unfathomable to me that to this day, the recognition of Tesla’s legacy is nowhere near the appreciation for the legacy of Babe Ruth in the game of baseball. Tesla was that big in his field. I truly hope that one day, future generations will come to appreciate the genius that was Nikola Tesla.

—B
ILL
E
VANS

In the course of researching and writing
Dry Ice,
I received the help and support of many individuals.

First thanks must go to Bill Evans for his fascination with the work of Nikola Tesla and his enthusiasm for this project.

Thanks to my buddy from my days in the aerospace industry, Ron Zellar, who is a creative genius when it comes to things that orbit this planet or otherwise exist in outer space, or don’t actually exist at all. Once again, Michael Rowan was my go-to guy for everything that floats, flies, explodes, or salutes. Both of you helped immeasurably when it came to the science, both real and imagined. Richard Smith provided his usual stellar technical support and expert advice on all matters related to software and computers.