Tesla's Signal (54 page)

“It's their main headquarters now, you know. Your buddies Edison and Marconi put in an order for supplies, and I delivered them in my truck.”

“
What? You helped Edison and Marconi?”
 

“Hey, hey.” Abraham held up his hands. “Take it easy, don't kill me. Listen. I delivered spools of copper wire—very inferior quality, mind you. The worst grade of material a buyer can get. Guaranteed to melt in a week. They didn't complain, so I guess they didn't notice. Seems like folks under Angel control, they start to lose their brains.”

“Those two didn't have much brains to begin with,” Niko muttered. “How did you resist the power of the Orb?”

“Clara left this gizmo with me.” Mr. Lowe held up the very first mirror-phase oscillator that Clara had built, last time she'd come to New York. “Is my girl clever, or not? I just pretended that I was under the Angels' spell like everyone else. That's the only way to survive now. But what I'm saying is, if I could get in, maybe
you
could get in.”

Clara nodded, smiling. “Why yes, I bet
I
could. Not
you,
Niko―but
me
they don't know from Adam. I could just put on some goggles to hide my normal eyes, and stroll right in.”

“Are you out of your mind? I'm not letting you go into Wardenclyffe alone!”

“Oh, of course not.” Clara rolled her eyes. “Women are too weak to do anything without a man to protect them.”  

“Give it up, Nick,” Abraham whispered. “I lost that battle a long time ago.”

***

“Sir, you might need this.” Niko gave Mr. Lowe one of the larger Amulets. “If the Martians increase their range of control, it might protect your warehouse, and maybe a block or two besides.”

“Thanks, Nick. You always were a
mensch
. Now get going, you two.”

Clara gave her Uncle a final hug. “We'll be back for
shabbas
dinner.”

“Sure you will, Clara-leh.”

They boarded the saucer. With a whisper, its spinning discs lifted them into the sky. They kept waving to Abraham and some of the others below, until they shrank to tiny dots.

Niko piloted, approaching New York City from the southwest. He kept their elevation low and their speed down, hoping to avoid detection by the Martians. Clara studied her meters and the pulse screen. “The place is swarming with them.”

“Are they coming after us?”

“I don't think so. Just patrolling. The meter shows a lot of Orbs. Sure wish we could smash a few.”

Niko grimaced. “Me too. But not yet. We don't want to tip our hand too early. Once they know we're there, they'll probably destroy half the city for spite.”

Clara nodded. “We've got to perfect that Light-Bender.”

“Indeed. For now, let's hide the Saucer somewhere and slip in. Meet with Hugo, give him the weapon schematics, take measurements, map out our installations.”

They came in sight of Manhattan, an island packed with tall rectangular containers of humanity: ornate mansions, brick tenements and towering skyscrapers. This was the gateway to America, the place where all roads led, the teeming maelstrom that had been the home of both Niko and Clara and millions of other immigrants like them.

New York City: center of the world.

But not anymore. Even from this far away, the city looked unnaturally still. As they came closer, Niko noticed several plumes of smoke rising from the northern end of Manhattan Island.

“Look over there, Clara...something's on fire. Any ships about?”

“The panel says no. They must have struck somewhere and took off.”

“I wonder what they destroyed. Can you tell?”

She shaded her eyes. “No...wait, let me get the binocs. It's north of Central Park. Hmm....I'm guessing Morningside Heights...”

“Columbia University!” Niko groaned in anguish, thinking of the lecture hall and the lab where he had given his demonstrations...the serene tree-lined walkways, the libraries with their shelves of precious books. “They'll destroy every school...every scrap of learning and culture. Oh, those filthy monsters.”

But Clara kept focused on practical matters. “We'd better take a detour and come in from the east side.”

So they took a wide curve and approached from the seaward side, hovering barely five feet above the water. “Hopefully they'll think we're a boat. A slow old scow.”

Once this approach had teemed with hundreds of boats over the Hudson River crossing from New Jersey to Manhattan. Now, the traffic had died down to almost nothing.

“Where has everyone gone? The city looks deserted.”

“Well, there's no traffic—no business,” Clara pointed out. “Life must be at a standstill.”

Chills prickled his skin as he maneuvered his craft around the tip of Lower Manhattan, past the docks and warehouses, and approached the Clinton Street station. He could not shake his memory of his last day in this city, when a mob had tried to murder him and Clara. And he had a feeling things in New York had only gone downhill from there.

The Saucer fit nicely into one of the bays where railroad cars had once unloaded coal, to power Edison's DC generators. Now Niko and Clara unloaded packs full of weapons and equipment.

“Let's unload some Tele-men. We may need protection.” Clara assembled her personal robot, the legendary Golem, in about 15 minutes. “Let's bring about five of them. We'll tell them to follow us slowly, at a distance so they don't attract too much attention. Remember, the Angels forbid any kind of machinery. Oh, wait, don't forget your telenite chip.”

She took out a tiny compact containing two fingernail-sized bits of a metal she had perfected in Phoenixville. This would enable the Tele-men to track and identify their creators, Clara and Niko, and differentiate them from enemies. He applied one to his scalp with a dab of strong glue.

“Wait, I want to set up the Conductor.” Niko picked up the Tele-man with the lantern head and placed it in the pilot's seat of the Saucer. “If we find ourselves in a jam, we'll signal him to come and get us. I sure hope this fellow works.” Like many of their devices, the Conductor had not been tested in combat.

“Sure wish we could perfect that Light Bender,” Clara said. “We could just fly around anywhere we wanted.”

They picked up their heavy backpacks, bulging with equipment: components to build transmitters, radio equipment, meters, signal watches, many Amulets, several induction guns, sonic charge weapons, and a Smith & Wesson revolver. “All right, let's go.”

They ventured out into the streets of New York. Within a few seconds they could feel the influence of the Orbs which ruled the city. Even with his Amulet, the oppressive vibration nearly knocked Niko over.

“Quick—I need a larger Amulet. More output.” He tucked a second device under his shirt. “That's a relief.” He could feel the electromagnetic waves forming a shield around him. But still he was uncomfortably aware of the suffocating force just beyond.

“Hugo's coordinates will take us right to City Hall,” Clara whispered. “That's a strange place for a hideout.”

For some reason they felt compelled to whisper. They proceeded cautiously through the train yard. The Tele-men followed at a discreet distance, tracking the two of them from a block away.

Trains sat idle on the tracks, some of the cars derailed and lying on their sides. “There must have been a lot of train wrecks when the Martians cut power to the city,” Clara realized. Today they heard no screeching train wheels: the roar of commerce and industry had stilled. They heard not even the call of sea gulls.
Not a single pigeon,
Niko realized.
Even Alu and her kind are terrified of the U'jaan
. There would be no more rescue by the pigeons of New York.

The silence seemed even more oppressive once they reached the residential and business districts of Lower Manhattan. They passed dark, empty shops and streetcars sitting idle on the tracks. They saw no carriages, no automobiles, no busy hurrying crowds on foot.

As they approached Broadway, they began to see people. Cautiously, with greater and greater dread, Niko observed the citizens of New York. They were not selling vegetables in pushcarts. They were not hurrying to buy and sell stocks and make deals. They just shuffled back and forth aimlessly, like patients in an asylum.

Niko pulled his hat over his face, in case anyone might recognize him, and stared at one person and another. Their eyes were a flat silver, and he needn't have worried about recognition: they stared right through him as if he weren't even there.

The streets showed signs of devastation. Buildings had been randomly struck by the Martian ray and piles of masonry littered the streets. The physical condition of the inhabitants had deteriorated as well. Like asylum inmates, they took no notice of cleanliness or sustenance. They were gaunt, unkempt, filthy. Some of them lay on the streets, staring blankly at the sky.

“Dear God.” Niko swore.

Clara pointed at a nearby skyscraper. A small, shining Orb pulsed out its evil frequency at the top. She checked one of her frequency meters. “There's another one 10 blocks away.”

Niko ground his teeth. “The master Orb at Wardenclyffe sends out the broadcast and all these others pick it up. The 100-million volt transmitter is supplying the booster power to broadcast it to the whole country... maybe the whole world.”
It works...just like I envisioned it,
thought Niko with grim bitterness.

They passed the Church of the Assumption. “Look, there's where everyone went,” Clara said.

Through the wide-open door, they could see the interior jam-packed with people. There was no church service; the people just randomly danced and bounced up and down, singing and crying out as though caught up in some private ecstasy. A few phrases could be heard. “Heavenly Lords...Holy Angels...bless me...take me to Heaven...!”

He watched in horrified fascination. “That's all they do? They just stay in there for hours? Days? How are they surviving?”

“Maybe the Angels feed them something.”

“How generous of them. Like the feedlots at the Chicago stockyards.”

They passed other venues of the eternal Angel show at theaters, large department stores and ballrooms. These venues were the only sign of life in the city. Niko noticed that these places seemed to have electricity. Well, that in itself would pull everyone in. Humans had forgotten how to live without his gift of Promethean fire.

As they turned up East Broadway, a horse-drawn wagon passed by on the street.
Santini's Greengrocers,
said the letters on the side. Two Italian men sat on the front bench.

“Oh, look. There's someone who's still normal,” Niko said.

“Don't be too sure,” said Clara.

“Hey you,” Santini called. “Where you folks going?”

Clara put a hand on Niko's arm. “Just keep walking,” she whispered.

“You new in town?” Santini got down from his wagon to block Niko's way. Niko saw that his eyes were as flat as silver coins.

Niko's hand crept to his induction gun, concealed in his satchel. “We're fine. Good day, sir.”

“My brother and me, we were chosen by the Holy Angels for a special job,” Santini told them. “We bring food to the Flock. Things are so much better since the Angels came. No crime, no poverty. Just peace and bliss in their heavenly cathedrals.” He grabbed Niko's arm  in sudden enthusiasm. “Come with us to the Heavenly cath―”

“No thank you, we'll walk there ourselves.” Niko tried to get loose, but Santini's grip proved tenacious.

“Your eyes...they don't look right. We heard about heretics like you! Defectives—deaf to the Angels' call.” Santini's brother stepped down and grabbed hold of Clara. “Come with us and be healed!”

“Go to the devil,
schmuck,”
Clara cried, and stomped on the man's foot. Niko followed up with an electric jolt which put Santini on the ground, and the two of them made a run for it.

Santini and his brother set up a howl and people appeared—
from where?
Niko wondered. Probably just lying passively in their apartments, waiting for a stimulus. “Get them! They're not of the Flock—there are heretics about!
Heretics!”
 

“Uh-oh.” A mob was forming. This group wasn't as enthusiastic about killing him as the lynch mob a few weeks ago—too malnourished, probably—but more kept coming. They turned out to watch from almost every doorway and window.

Niko and Clara got out their electric guns. This was going to betray their identity for sure—but there was no choice. Niko fired a blast. “Get away,” he cried. “We're here on the Angels' orders!” That confused the mob for a few minutes and gave Niko and Clara the chance to outpace them.  

“Sure miss the Roadster,” Clara said. “Wonder what he meant by 'defectives'. Are some people immune to the Orb?”

“Maybe the mentally ill, and feeble-minded.”