Tesla's Signal (64 page)

Once more, Tesla had made a fool of him!
If I ever see that bastard again, I'll suck out his goddamn brains myself.
 

With a sudden twinge, Edison remembered the day Tesla had walked out of his office, muttering “someday I'll show
you
a practical joke.”

The joke's on me, all right.

“Masters, Tesla appears to have used...some kind of matter-transforming explosive. Something that would, ah, quickly turn him to air molecules...”

V'kaan moved up and grabbed him. “You're lying, human. You're a useless fool.” Drops of fluid fell from her skin and spattered Edison's face. “Or is it possible that you are a
traitor?
Perhaps you are actually working with
him?”
 

Without warning, V'kaan thrust her neural wand against Tom's neck. The sudden agony made Tom Edison fall over. Ragged screams emerged from his throat.

“Tell us the truth, wretched human! You're with Tes'laa, aren't you?”

“Please, Mistress, I—”

The jolts came again and again, like liquid fire on his nerves. All three of the aliens converged on him and joined the sport. Once they started, it seemed these Martians were of no mind to stop. Worse than the pain, was the torture they could inflict on the mind, in the form of mental oppression and terror—a feeling like being buried in a tiny hole a hundred miles underground... like being dangled naked above a lake of fire with a legion of demons waiting to rip his balls...

A warm wetness spread out and ran down his trousers. He heard himself begging and sobbing. An instinct for self-abasement made him crawl over to V'kaan's foot and kiss it desperately. “Dear, adored Angel Masters...”

V'kaan sank her claws into him, pulled him up and stared at him with a single bulbous eye. “Earthman, I have decided you are of no more use to us as an engineer. So you will serve me in another way. I'm very hungry...”

But V'kaan was interrupted as a crew burst in and began jabbering to the Captain. V'kaan dropped Edison on the floor where he lay gasping and trembling. He caught only a few words of the crew members' report. They seemed to want the Captain to come look at something.

K'viin nudged Edison with his foot. “You! Come with us,
scurf!”
 

Shaking all over, Tom obeyed. He felt as if that rogue elephant Topsy had turned around and stomped him...but he dared not show any weakness or hesitation.
Obey instantly and joyfully
. If his Masters ordered him to carry a thousand pounds of iron bars up a mountain, he'd damn well do it and smile.

So all of them proceeded down the stairs, and out to an area at the rear of the Station, away from the crowd. There, next to a shuttle, a group of U'jaan stood around a corpse.

“You,” the Captain addressed Edison. “They say they have found the body of Tes'laa. Is that him?” And K'viin shoved Edison so that he almost fell right on top of the dead man.

What in the Sam Hill
... Edison studied the dead man, noticing his tall, thin build...his handsome face with a small neat mustache and a shock of dark wavy hair, parted in the center.

Good Lord!
His heart leaped. It sure looked like Nick, but...
how in the devil did the misbegotten bastard disappear
there
and end up
here?
Or did he create some kind of
duplicate
of himself?
Edison forced himself to admit the truth.
That piss-ant Nick Tesla was way smarter than me.
 

Wait a sec..
.Edison pressed a hand to his mouth.
This guy looks younger than Nick.
Of course the dead man's face was the worse for wear; the crowd had roughed him up a little. That made the identification a bit harder.
Well? Is it him, or not?
 

“Answer quickly.” K'viin's hand went to his belt.

Edison pasted a smile across his face. “Oh yes, glorious Masters, that certainly appears to be Tesla.”

“Do not tell me appearances!” K'viin jabbed the neural wand in Tom's direction. “Tell the truth or I shall devour you immediately and toss your remains on the street. Is this Tes'laa?”

His eyes traveled to that decoration on the man's lapel..it looked like a cloth flower, with a bullet hole through it. Another very small red flower of blood stained the shirt beneath.
Whoever plugged him was a damn good shot...

Wait a sec...
a memory came to him. With sudden horror, he realized the truth.
Jumpin' Jesus! That can't be Tesla. Not in a hundred years!
 

Nick Tesla would
never
wear a rose in his lapel. Nick hated all jewelry and personal adornment. When he'd worked at Edison's plant, the men had kidded him about it.
If you hate jewelry so much, you won't never be able to get near a woman. So how do you ever expect to get laid?
 

Holy Hell.
Edison sweated like a pig, realizing:
it's just some poor bastard who
looks
like him.
An even more disturbing idea occurred to him:
is it possible that...that this guy was a
ringer?
Some sort of a substitution? All part of their plan?
 

“Y-yes, Master, it's Tesla all right.” Damn, he sure wished he were back in bed with Shelia, with his head between her breasts! Well, whoever this dead guy was, he had saved Tom's ass.
Thanks, buster. I'll send your widow some flowers
. “Yes, Master, I swear to you on a stack of Bibles it's him. You've finally nailed him, Master. That lowlife Tesla's deader'n a doornail.”

The Angels all began to rumble with joy. “Excellent!” Captain K'viin's claws twitched with joy. “If Tes'laa is eliminated—then victory is in our grasp. I only regret being deprived of the pleasure of devouring that villain myself. That would have been such an exquisite treat.”

And Tom's Masters then turned their backs on him and began expressing their joy with expansive gestures and rumbles of celebration. “Our foe has been vanquished! Our last obstacle to victory is no more!”

“Now we'll regain control of this city and this planet!”

Ignoring Edison, K'viin gave an order for all the crew. “Prepare to return to headquarters! We'll not be deprived of our banquet tonight!  Tes'laa is dead—let the U'jaan Fleet celebrate!”

Edison stood up, brushed himself off and tried to calm his nerves. Truth be known, he didn't care one smidgen about the U'jaan fleet. All that mattered to him was Tom Edison, and saving Tom Edison's skin.
They forgot all about me,
he exulted. Somehow, his inventor's luck had saved him.

***

The U'jaan managed to keep their emotions tightly controlled, except after they had just fed. After K'viin and the elite crew members enjoyed an exquisite banquet at the Tower headquarters, intense urges swept  them.

The message went out:
the enemy is vanquished. Planet Earth will soon be ours!
 

In his relief, assured of victory, K'viin afforded himself a break. He and some of the other officers left the command console and went to a hidden chamber in the Headquarters where a group of skilled females waited in the Bliss baths. And there they lost themselves in a special kind of Heaven.

The lesser officers, stationed in New York City, were left to try and figure out what was happening.
Tes'laa has been eliminated
, came the first message.

There was wild rejoicing and touching of claws. But D'liy Vaa thought to ask: “Then who is firing at our ships and crew?”

A few remnants of the heretics which he has armed,
came the reply from Headquarters..

So what should be their response to the revolt of their formerly docile resources?

They are of no concern. Finish them off any way you wish.

D'liy Vaa liked that answer. “Crew members, we're free to do as we like. It's time to punish the ungrateful humans who have rejected our blessing. Now they'll see what our wrath is like.”

So the U'jaan troops abandoned their tight discipline and became consumed with the battle madness which had damned their species so long ago. They forgot their noble mission of bringing happiness to the benighted creatures of Earth, and then granting them the privilege of joining substance with their Masters. Now all that mattered was to punish and harvest as many of the wretched
scurfs
as possible. If Earth creatures were not to be resources...then they would be
prey
.

“Officer Vaa,” came the report, “I am picking up a signal—”

“Never mind, Crewmember. We're going on a hunt!”

Crew members left their assigned posts: communication, surveillance, frequency monitoring. They abandoned consoles and instruments that had watched for Tes'laa and his ships, weapons and army. They joined in the orgy of destruction—smashing and killing at random.

Rejoice,
the message went out,
we have no more to fear from our most dangerous foe: the dread and vicious Earthman called
Tes'laa.

***

Every breath hurt worse than the last. Better to just stop breathing and give in to the darkness. But Niko's mind couldn't let go. It kept turning the thoughts over and over.
What happened...how did I escape the...
 

He remembered Thomas Edison's gloating face. Yes, Tom had trapped him again, and come up empty. Tom's keepers wouldn't be pleased at all. Despite his pain, a faint smile crossed Niko's lips as he imagined Edison's frustration, humiliation—and what the Martians would do to him.

You see, Tom? I
do
have a sense of humor.

He managed a chuckle, before the agony in his ribs cut it off. But back to the question.
How did I...
He tried to figure it out.
I have done superhuman feats, but only when I'm not in my right mind.
 

But Niko had struggled all his life to
prevent
'going out of his mind'. He had honed his will and control to a fine instrument.

Yet in dire situations, that control broke down. Tom Edison had not terrified him enough to make it happen. It was when V'kaan had touched his eye with her soul-sucking proboscis.
I was one millisecond away from being agonizingly devoured...and she would have forced me to worship and adore her, even while she ripped out my life.
 

That
was what had sent him over! 

Those moments of losing control...they had saved him several times. But now...he was all out of energy and solutions.

Niko had done all he could. He had mobilized humanity and given them the power to fight back...he had spoiled the U'jaan feast...cheated V'kaan of the pleasure of torturing him. He wished he could live long enough to speak to Clara one last time. To give her the solution to the Light Bender problem. In the moment that his brain had crossed physical matter, the connection had been made: the answer had come clear.

And maybe Niko would like to say a few other things to Clara as well. But it didn't seem likely he'd get that chance.

***

“Attention Volt One! Niko!” Clara spoke into the communication watch, over and over. “Can you hear me? Come in, come in please!”

The meter watch told her that the Orbs' field strength had dropped almost 30 percent. Niko must have succeeded in destroying that big Orb inside the terminal. So why couldn't she reach him? She feared the worst.

But now that communications were working again, she could at least signal the Tele-men, wherever they might be located.

***

Niko lay back and waited for the end, listening to the chaos of meaningless sounds: the whine of Alien ships; the screams of the crowds. Explosions. A grinding noise, followed by a tiny, regular beep. The pitch rose, fell. In his delirium he couldn't quite place this sound.

Next to him, a girder began to shift. Bricks and rubble made rumbling noises as they were pushed aside. Was someone coming for him? A rescuer? Niko tried to call out. “H...help,” he managed to croak.

More of the debris was pulled away with grindings and shrieks of metal. Another hand reached through, to grip his ankle. It didn't feel like a human hand. Larger; stronger...

The U'jaan?
He wondered if there was some way he could end his life before they feasted on him.