Conspircaies

'He doesn't, but you do? How'd you reach that conclusion? The crates wound up in my room, remember?'

'He isn't part of this. We are.'

'If what you've said is true, we're all part of this—whatever 'this' might be.'

The phone rang. It was Kenway.

'Get up to my room,' Jack told him. 'I've got something to show you.'

'Be right up,' Kenway said. 'And brother, have I got something to show you.'

'Bring Zaleski,' Jack told him. 'And if you've got any tools, bring them along too.'

'Will do.'

Canfield groaned as Jack hung up the phone. 'Not Zaleski too!'

'The more the merrier, I figure,' Jack said as he dialed Lew's room number.

'Who now?' Canfield said. 'Olive Farina?'

'Olive?' Jack said, watching Canfield closely. 'She's been found?'

'No. Where have you been? She still hasn't shown up. A missing person report has been filed. Everybody's still looking for her.'

Jack sensed that Canfield didn't know any more about Olive than he was saying.

No answer at Lew's room.

'I was going to ask Lew Ehler too,' Jack said, hanging up. 'But I guess he's gone back to Shoreham.'

'Just as well.' Canfield grunted with annoyance. 'Zaleski and Kenway will be more than enough to handle. Whatever you do, don't mention the Otherness or that this device may be a link to it.'

'Why not?'

'Because proof of the existence of the Otherness will expose Zaleski's UFO's and aliens and Kenway's New World Order for the shams they are. Who knows how they'll react. They might not be able to handle it.' He pounded his fist on the armrest of his wheelchair. 'I wish you hadn't called them!'

'Relax,' Jack told him. 'We'll order pizza and beer. We'll make this a party. Like a mini barn raising. You'll see. It'll be fun.'

9

Kenway and Zaleski arrived less than fifteen minutes later. They both knew Canfield who finally seemed to have resigned himself to sharing the stage with the two newcomers.

'Take a gander at this.' Kenway said, holding out a folded sheet of fax paper.

Jack opened the flimsy sheet and stared at the photo of a portly young man, blond, with a fuzzy attempt at a beard.

'Our mutual friend, I presume?'

'Exactly!' Kenway's grin was shark-like, his gray crewcut more bristly than ever as he took back the fax. 'Oh, brother, is the shit ever gonna hit the fan when I pass this around tomorrow. I knew there was something phony about our fearless leader!'

Zaleski tried to get a look. 'Who? Roma? What've you got there?'

'You'll find out tomorrow,' Kenway said.

Jack's thoughts drifted as they argued. If Roma was a bogus identity, who was the guy running the show? Why had he created SESOUP and organized this meeting? Was he connected to Melanie's disappearance? To these boxes? And if so, why had they wound up with Jack, when he hadn't even known he was coming until the night before?

Jack's head was spinning.

'Whatever,' Zaleski finally said to Kenway, then grinned at Jack as he displayed an elaborate ratchet set. 'You want tools, man? We got tools. What the fuck for?'

Jack explained what he could. Neither of them needed any introduction to Nikola Tesla, it seemed. Zaleski and Kenway were awed by the prospect of assembling a contraption designed by him.

They divided the workload. Jack and Zaleski would assemble the base while Kenway and Canfield tackled the dome. The contents of each crate were dumped onto one of the two double beds, and they had just begun to work when Canfield lifted his hand.

'Shhh! What's that?'

Jack listened. Something scratching at his door. He went to the peephole but saw nothing. Yet the sound persisted. He pulled open the door—

And Roma's monkey scampered in.

'Get that fucking oversized rodent outta here!' Zaleski shouted, tossing a pillow at the monkey.

It screeched and dodged the pillow, scampered a single circuit of the room, then fled. Jack slammed the door after it.

'Don't let that damn thing in again!' Zaleski cried, brushing his hair off his forehead. 'Little fucker gives me the creeps.'

'For once we agree on something,' Kenway said. 'It shouldn't be allowed to run free.'

Jack was remembering what Olive had told him about that monkey, how she'd overheard it talking to Roma…or whoever he was.

'Let's get back to business,' Canfield said.

'Tesla got royally screwed by J. P. Morgan, you know,' Kenway said after a few minutes. 'Morgan promised to fund his broadcast power project back at the turn of the century. He let Tesla get the Wardenclyffe tower three- quarters built—'

'That would be out on Long Island?' Jack said, glancing at Canfield.

'Yes, of course,' Kenway said. 'Morgan let him get to a certain point, then suddenly pulled the financial rug out from under him.'

'Why do that?' Jack said. 'Broadcast power would be worth zillions.'

'Because Morgan was one of the bankrollers of the One World conspiracy, and he and his fellows came to realize that a cheap energy source like Tesla's broadcast power would rev all the world's economies into high gear. They figured that once the secret was out, they'd lose control of those economies. Tesla had a mysterious breakdown somewhere around 1908 and was never quite the same after.'

'Bullshit,' Zaleski said from the other side of the room. 'He had a breakdown in 1908, but it wasn't caused by no J. P. fucking Morgan. Tesla had an in on alien technology, that's why he made all his breakthroughs.'

Jack glanced again at Canfield who mouthed, I warned you.

'Back in 1908, with Morgan pulling the plug on his finances, Tesla needed a dramatic demonstration that his Wardenclyffe tower worked. Peary was making a second try to reach the North Pole at the time, so Tesla contacted the expedition and said they should be on the lookout for an unusual occurrence. On June 30, he aimed a beam of energy from Wardenclyffe to an arctic area where the explosion would be seen by the Perry team. But nothing happened. He thought he'd failed. Then he heard about Tunguska.'

'What's Tunguska?' Jack asked.

'A place in Siberia,' Canfield said. 'Half a million square acres of forest were utterly destroyed by a mysterious cataclysmic explosion on June 30, 1908.'

'Right!' Zaleski said. 'The same day as Tesla's demonstration. And Tunguska is on the same longitudinal line as Peary's base camp.'

'Researchers have estimated the force of the blast at fifteen megatons,' Canfield added. 'The boom was heard over six hundred miles away. It's never been explained.'

Zaleski grinned. 'But Old Nik knew the truth. His beam had overshot its mark.'

'It was a meteor!' Kenway said.

'Really?' Zaleski's eyebrows floated halfway to his hairline. 'Then how come no meteor fragments were ever found?'

'An antimatter meteor,' Kenway said, not backing down an inch. 'When antimatter meets matter, there's cataclysmic destruction, with total annihilation of one or the other.'

'Uh-uh, Miles, old boy. Tesla did it, and the total awesomeness of the destructive power he'd unleashed blew his circuits. He had a nervous breakdown.'

'Wrong,' Kenway said. 'J. P. Morgan's betrayal caused the breakdown.'