“The light of the gods in human hands,” Henrik Ellsmere marveled, his face anxious. His equations were the key to tapping into the space stone and metering its flow.
Tesla had a faraway look on his face.
Bessie Coleman walked over to the steel plate and touched the metal. “Cold, it’s a cold light that bore through,” she said, looking from Shorty Duggan to Hugo Renwick who seemed on the verge of tears. The five of them stood in the hanger of the Weldon Institute’s private airfield in the Jersey wetlands.
Coleman broke her silence. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I do,” Destiny Stevenson said from the hanger’s opening. She had a gun in her hand. “This thing will not prevent war, but instead bring wholesale slaughter to a world already beset and bestride with troubles. It must not be.” She drew in a breath slowly. “And if any of you won’t do anything to prevent this, I will expend any and all efforts to make sure this…death ray is never fully realized.”
Tesla said, “Miss Stevenson, surely that is too pessimistic an outlook. Think of the good that could be achieved with a device such as this.” He rested a hand on the Electro-Pulsar atop its tripod. “A person trapped under fallen rocks or timber, a wall collapses, and—”
“Then they’ll be counted among the dead if conventional means can’t save them,” Stevenson said sharply. “Better that than the death toll this wickedness could and will unleash.” She pointed at the instrument, “And all because of that tear of the sun goddess.”
Inside the pulsar was a piece of the piece of the Daughter Henson had given Tesla. It was the power source.
“I think you’re overdoing it, Destiny,” Coleman began. “I realize you’re still bothered by what happened in the garage, but you have to look past that, honey.”
“Look past destruction on an untold scale?” she challenged.
“Dr. Tesla would see that wouldn’t happen,” Duggan chimed in.
“Yeah,” Stevenson snorted, “ask Edison about that.”
“That’s not fair, Miss Stevenson,” Renwick said. “Progress is always fraught with uncertainty. Through the institute, we can wield this responsibly.”
“Bullshit,” she said, stepping in more, the gun level before her.
“You plan to gun us all down in the name of mankind, lass?” Duggan said.
“I plan to make you fools come to your senses.”
“Remember that gadget you showed us?’ Coleman said.
“What?”
The aviatrix threw the twin joined canisters Stevenson had shown her and Henson several days earlier. Designed to disorient, it exploded at Stevenson’s feet with a flash and a bang, causing the other woman to stumble backward. Duggan was on her and took the gun away.
“God damn you all,” she said, blinking hard to clear her eyes.
“Wait,” Tesla said. He walked over to his machine and opened a hatch in its side. The piece of the Daughter was secured there by two metal rods and wiring. He got the fragment loose and handed it to Stevenson. “Hold onto this, throw it in the river, hide it away do with it as you will. Perhaps you’re right. These recent events do have me questioning my ideas. I pride myself on always knowing the answer I seek. Now I don’t know.”
“Seqinek shall guide her,” Ellsmere muttered.
Lucy DeHavilin poured some punch into her glass. A dark-eyed woman in pearls walked up beside her. They were at a function.
“Hello, Marie,” DeHavilin said to her.
“Hello, yourself. How was Cuba?” Marie LaSalle asked.
“Relaxing and fulfilling. Though I wish a certain someone had been there with me.”
LaSalle smiled. “A certain someone who was in all the news because of his saving the day at Liberty Hall?”
DeHavilin winked at her as a man with a walrus mustache in a black suit took to the podium.
“Thank you for coming out today,” he began. “I know in one way or the other our beloved Fremont Davis touched the lives for the better of those gathered here in this institution, the Challenger’s Club.”
As the speaker went on, LaSalle glanced at the mounted enlarged photograph of the late Fremont Davis, silently toasting Matthew Henson.
The ship, a Patoka-class oiler called the Mesquita sat listless in its berth. Destiny Stevenson stood on the dock near Matthew Henson, the two gazing into each other’s eyes.
“Write if you get work, kid,” Ira Kunsler joked.
Henson turned to his friend and the two men hugged, patting each other on the back. “I wouldn’t have made it without you, Ira.”
“You’re gonna get me all weepy,” he sniffed.
“Take care of yourself, Matthew.” Cole Rodgers stuck out his hand.
Shaking it, Henson replied, “You too, Cole. I look forward to reading about you in the papers. Give ‘em hell, brother.”
They grinned at each other. Henson embraced Stevenson again. “Once I square things with Ackie, maybe we come back here or maybe you’ll learn to like walrus-fur coats.”
“Maybe.” She gave him a crooked smile.
“Tell Victor good-bye for me,” he added. He was referring to her father’s half-white son who’d disguised himself as Vin O’Hara to get the goods on Dutch Schultz.
She nodded and kissed him.
Henson hefted his duffle bag on his shoulders and giving his friends a half wave, turned and walked up the gangplank onto the waiting ship and his return to the Arctic.
-The End-
About the Author
Gary Phillips is the son of a mechanic and a librarian. He was weaned on too many comic books, Dashiell Hammett stories, reruns of the original Twilight Zone, and experiences ranging from community organizer to delivering dog cages. His 1950s set graphic novel the Be-Bop Barbarians riffs on race relations,
