On the Wing (15 page)

“I—”

“If you find me unsatisfactory, it's because you find yourself unsatisfactory. You project your failings onto me.”

What the hell had happened? I'd hoped for a cathartic release of anger, a release that would serve as a surrogate release of shame, but my own anger had turned against me, or been turned against me. How had that happened?

Well, you've seen how it happened, but at the time I was mystified by the turn of events, and I was still furious, and so I entered Sweetwater fully loaded and cocked, on a hair trigger.

*   *   *

ANGER HAD SO BLINKERED MY REASON that I didn't even ask myself what Sweetwater's slogan might mean as I rolled past the sign that welcomed visitors to the town:

Entering Sweetwater

Population 8,700

“Someday We'll Be Wireless”

The day had advanced to that time when I ordinarily craved some human contact, when I hoped to find someone who would lend an ear to my story of the day's adventure, but not today. Because I was in no mood for conversation, I thought I would just buy a sandwich from a delicatessen and find some simple shelter for the night without having to persuade a family to put me up.

I rode
Spirit
up and down the main street, but I didn't find a deli. I did find Nielson's Museum of Wireless Power Transmission, though, and it resembled a deli. The signs in its windows promised, in addition to a “Thrilling Tesla Coil Demonstration,” cold beer, bratwurst, and a lunch counter. When I entered, I found that Nielson's was a combination of a small grocery store and the promised lunch counter, run by a dour man with nearly no chin, assisted by a dark-haired girl of about my age, whom I took to be his daughter. Things were looking up. The girl was behind the counter, and the man was on a stepladder, bringing overstock down from a high shelf. I headed toward the counter. I knew that the man had spotted me, because I could hear him, behind me, scrambling down from the stepladder, and in another moment he was in front of me, rushing to interpose himself between me and the girl. Like two fighters, or two chess players, or a hockey goalie and an opposing forward—one a grizzled veteran, the other young, fast on his feet, looking for an opening, and eager to score—we danced our way through tactical maneuvers, feints, and adjustments. Though I had youth and will and lust on my side, he was practiced, he knew the territory, and he was more agile than I expected him to be. He won.

He took a stance behind the counter, nodded at the girl in a way that sent her scurrying off with a feather duster in her hand, and turned a look of triumph on me.

“I'd like a hero,” I said, acknowledging defeat. “Ham and swiss, with mustard.”

“A hero,” he said. “I know what you mean, but we don't call it a hero here.”

“What do you call it?” I asked, struggling to remain civil.

“A snake, a gut buster, a long lunch, or a cylindrical dinner.”

“Okay. I'll have one of those.”

“Which?”

“Aren't they all the same?”

“No.”

“How are they different?”

“They have different names.”

Behind me, the girl giggled. I wished that I could disappear, dematerialize, and then rematerialize outside, astride
Spirit,
on my way out of town.

“I'll have the ball buster,” I said.

“What?”

“I mean belly buster.”

“Gut buster.”

“Yeah. That one.”

He went to work. I could hear the girl behind me, going about the business of dusting, and I could feel my ears burning.

“Since you asked for a hero,” said chinless dad, “I'm guessing you're from the New York area. That right?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you from exactly?”

Here we go again, I thought. “Babbington,” I said, with anger that I couldn't conceal, “and you're right; it's in New York, on Long Island.” I could have added, “You want to make something of it?” but even in the heat of the moment I realized that it would have made me sound like a kid on a playground.

Pretending that he was making idle small talk while working on the sandwich (and I could see that he was pretending), he asked, “Have you got electricity there?”

“Electricity?” I snarled. “Sure. Of course we've got electricity.” What was this? A trick question? Behind me, the girl was trying to suppress her giggles, but failing.

“In your house?”

“Yes! In my house!” What kind of rube did he take me for? What kind of antiquated backwater did he take Babbington for? “Babbington's a modern place,” I asserted. “It might look old-fashioned and kind of quaint, but that's just part of its charm. Actually—”

“How do you get it?”

“What?”

“The electricity. In your house. How do you get it?”

“We—um—it—I don't know what you mean.”

“Comes through wires, doesn't it?”

“Of course it comes through wires.”

“Ha! You think that's modern? You're living in an antiquated backwater, rube.”

I'd had it. I spun around and made straight for the door, struggling to avoid looking at the girl, resisting the desire to take a mental snapshot of her to carry with me on the road, into the night. I ran down the steps and leapt onto
Spirit
's saddle. I stood and brought my weight down on her starter pedal. She roared into life as if she were as irritated as I.

“Hey! Wait!” shouted the man. He was at my side, holding on to my arm. “What are you doing?”

“I'm getting out of here!”

“You're leaving? What's the matter? Was it something I said?”

“You're damn right it was,” I shouted back at him.

Did I hear the girl gasp behind me?

“What was it?” he asked.

“You insulted my home town!”

“Insulted? Oh—that was nothing—”

“Not to me, it wasn't,” I said. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to beat the shit out of him, if I could. I didn't say any of that. I growled. At least I think I growled. What came out of me sounds like a growl in memory. It might have been a howl, a howl of frustrated anger, wounded pride. I think the girl ran inside. I seem to recall hearing a door slam.

“Would you shut that thing off so we can talk?” he said.

“No! I'm leaving. And she's not a thing. She's an aerocycle—a slender beauty.”

I started rolling toward the road. He trotted alongside me, imploring me to reconsider. I began speeding up. He began running. I speeded up some more. He grabbed hold of the remnant of the Kap'n Klam banner and tried to keep up, or to hold me back. I accelerated, thinking that I would force him to let go. He didn't. He fell to the ground.

“Hey!” he called. “Hey! Wait!”

“Let go!” I shouted.

I accelerated some more. He wouldn't let go. I was dragging him along. This wouldn't do. If I continued, I'd hurt him. Well, why not?

“Why not?” said
Spirit.
“Because if you did that, you would become someone very different from the boy you are now, someone I would rather not know.”

“What's this? Are you my conscience now?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I don't want to hear you. I'm going to drag this guy till he bleeds.”

“What fun! Revenge! A fine thing! How noble! Next you'll claim that he deserves it.”

“Doesn't he? Didn't he hurt me? Didn't he slander Babbington? Didn't he call you ‘that thing'? He does deserve it.”

“That's what they all say.”

“Ahhh, shit,” I said. I stopped. I set
Spirit
on her stand and left her idling while I walked back to the father of the dark-haired girl. He had struggled to his feet and was checking himself for damage and dusting himself off.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Who invented the radio?” he asked right back.

“Guglielmo Marconi.” There, I thought. That ought to show him.

“Wrong!” he said.

“Wrong?”

“Ever hear of Nikola Tesla?”

“Um—yes. I have. He invented the Tesla coil.”

“And the radio.”

“Are you sure?”

He snorted. I took the snort to mean that he was sure.

“You'll have to prove it to me,” I said.

“Come on inside,” he said, stretching his arm in the direction of the Museum of Wireless Power Transmission, some distance behind us. I looked in that direction. His daughter was standing at the entrance, holding her hands to her mouth in surprise and concern. “My daughter has prepared a presentation on Tesla, including a demonstration of the famous Tesla coil—you'd like to see that, wouldn't you?”

I had seen demonstrations of Tesla coils before. In fact, I had given demonstrations of Tesla coils myself. His daughter's presentation might share much with the others I'd seen and given, but it promised to be delightfully different. I would indeed like to see it, and I answered truthfully.

“Yes, I would,” I said, and we began walking back to the museum.

“Tell him about the radio,” he urged the girl as soon as we were within earshot.

“In 1943,” she said, bright-eyed, “the United States Supreme Court declared that Guglielmo Marconi's patent on the radio was invalid and that Nikola Tesla was its true inventor.”

“I didn't know that,” I admitted.

“It's true!” she said. “We've got copies of the ruling right here, in the museum. Would you like one?”

“Well, I—”

“You can have it for free.”

Mining the depths of my talent for humor, I said, “At that price, I'll take two.”

“One per customer,” said her father, whom I had forgotten.

“Come with me,” the girl said. “I'll show you the museum. There's a Tesla coil.”

“So I've heard.”

“Have you ever seen a Tesla coil?”

“Yes,” I said, offhandedly. “I've seen several, and I've even operated one.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed.

“Back at home, in Babbington, that antiquated backwater,” I said with a withering glance for her father, “I gave demonstrations for elementary school students, under the auspices of the high school science department, using a Tesla coil to make dramatic bolts of artificial lightning and a Van de Graaff generator to make my hair stand on end.”

“That's wonderful,” she said, “but—there are more practical uses.”

“Oh. Of course. Sure. I'm sure there are. I didn't mean—”

We had made our way back into Nielson's, and she had led me to a back corner of the store, beyond a display of brooms and mops, where she began her demonstration.

“This is my Tesla coil,” she began, beaming, “my pride and joy. I built it myself.”

“Wow.”

“Impressed?”

“I'll say. It's big. And it's different.”

“Different from what?”

“From the little one I use for the demonstrations at home.”

“What's different about it? Other than size, that is.”

“The doughnut—”

“Torus.”

“Right. I knew that.”

“Ring torus, to be specific.”

“The ring torus is—well—no offense—fatter.”

“That's an excellent observation. There's a reason for the difference. You see, from what you've said I can tell that the coil you've been using was built for the purpose of entertainment. It's designed to inspire awe in the young and ignorant. Don't be offended by my saying this, but it's essentially a toy.”

I wanted to say something along the lines of, “Nothing that came from your comely lips could ever offend me,” and I was preparing myself to say—with a certain traveled suavity—something pretty much like that when she stopped me with a hand on my arm, then a finger to my lips.

“The small radius of curvature in your ring torus leads to loss of energy through coronal discharges and streamers,” she said. Then she raised an eyebrow, inquiring whether I was following her.

I had been struck dumb. Her hand on my arm, her finger on my lips, were all I knew, all I needed to know.

“Sparks,” she said in explanation.

“Mm—ah—yeah—uh-huh,” I said with a certain traveled suavity.

“But as you can see my torus has a large radius of curvature—”

I nearly swooned. There was a definite danger of a coronal discharge. Or a streamer.

“—specifically to prevent such a wasteful loss of energy, because this coil does what Tesla designed it to do.” She picked a lamp from a nearby table, a lamp without a cord, allowed herself a dramatic pause, then switched the lamp on, and with its light illuminating her face, she said, “It transmits power.”

So did she. For the next hour or so, she was quite instructive on the subject of Tesla and the wireless transmission of energy; at least I have some memory of being impressed by her presentation, but nothing that she said about Tesla stayed with me. Later, when I reached Corosso, I had to spend hours in the library of the New Mexico Institute of Mining, Technology, and Pharmacy, reteaching myself what she had taught me, in order to understand why the radius of curvature was a factor in allowing a high electrical potential to develop on the surface of the torus, the area of which is defined by the equation
S = π
2
(R + r) (R - r)
where
R
is the major radius of the torus and
r
is the minor radius of the torus, an equation that to this day makes me hot.

When she had finished, some time passed before I realized that she had. I don't know how long I stood there, dumbstruck, before she said, “That's it. That's the whole show.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I've got to go help my mom with dinner.”

“Maybe I could—”

“Here you go,” said her father's voice from behind me.