The Wells Bequest Read online

  Mark Twain and the doorman burst out laughing at something Twain had said. He slapped the other man on the shoulder and came into the parlor. He was a large man, tall and loose limbed, like some big-headed western animal—a bison or something. He walked with a sort of energetic shamble.

  When he caught sight of Jaya, he stopped dead. “Bless me!” he drawled. “Either I’m dreaming or you’re real!”

  “I could say the same thing about you,” said Jaya. “Why shouldn’t I be real?” She was talking in her normal voice, not her Rani-of-Chomalur Cambridge accent.

  “I thought you were a dream, all those years ago!”

  “Really? We’ve met before? Well, that makes things easier! Hey, why aren’t you wearing a white suit?”

  “Should I be wearing a white suit?”

  “You always do in the movies.”

  “What are ‘the movies’? And why don’t you look older?”

  “Moving pictures—cinema. Hasn’t it been invented yet? If not, it will be soon. There’s a really cool early movie where they build a rocket and fly to the moon—the rocket’s in the Phénoménothèque Centrale Supérieure de la Ville de Paris. Quit it, Leo!”

  I was kicking her hopelessly. “Jaya! You quit it!” I hissed.

  Mark Twain looked at me. “Jaya! That’s it! I’ve been trying to remember that name all these years. It is Jaya, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She held out her hand. “Jaya Rao, Rani of Chomalur.” This time she remembered to use the accent.

  “Oh, so you’re a princess now?” He folded Jaya’s hand in his big paw and shook it vigorously. “What about you, young man? Are you a prince?”

  “No, he’s my servant, Leo,” said Jaya.

  “Your servant, eh?” Twain guffawed. “Well, how do you like that, young man?”

  “I . . .” I didn’t know how to answer. “But how do you know Jaya?”

  “I met this young lady ten years ago. She crushed my favorite hat. And she told me all about you.” He shook his shaggy head at Jaya. “Funny thing, you don’t look a day older than you did then. Which makes sense, if what you told me was true. Well, well, well! I’m glad you’re real after all. Bless your heart, you gave me a splendid idea for a novel—but I guess you already know that. I always wanted to thank you, and it’s no use trying to thank a dream.”

  “What novel?” asked Jaya, forgetting the accent again.

  “Why, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It’s the story of a modern man who visits the past. Don’t they read it anymore in your time? No, don’t tell me. The news of my book’s death might finish me off, and I’m nowhere near ready for my own funeral.”

  “Oh, don’t worry! A Connecticut Yankee is a classic. So I inspired it? Cool!”

  “Jaya,” I said, “is that true? Did you really go visit Mark Twain in the 1880s?”

  “Well, no, not yet. But I’m obviously going to.”

  “When you do, will you do me a favor?” said Mark Twain. “Warn me not to invest a single penny in that diabolical typesetting machine.”

  “Sure,” said Jaya.

  At the same time, I said, “She can’t!”

  “Why not? I would take it as a great kindness.”

  “Well, she didn’t, or you wouldn’t have to ask her to now,” I explained. “So that means she won’t, so she can’t. And if she did, it might change history, which could have terrible consequences.”

  “Oh, you and your terrible consequences!” Jaya snapped. “What makes you think all my consequences will be so terrible, anyway? I inspired A Connecticut Yankee—that wasn’t such a terrible consequence, was it? And yes, I can so. The Wells machine is unrestricted, so the fact that I didn’t warn him yet doesn’t mean I won’t. I can do whatever I like. But don’t worry, Mr. Clemens—your financial situation isn’t a problem in the long run. You’ll sort it out soon.”

  “Thank you—that’s a great relief,” said Mark Twain.

  “Jaya! You can’t go around prophesying like that!”

  “I don’t see why not. He does sort out his finances, so what’s wrong with telling him? But Mr. Clemens, I need you to do me a favor. Can you help me get a private word with Tesla?”

  “Leave it to me.”

  To my relief, the electric door opened and the room filled with lecture guests, so Jaya stopped talking to Mark Twain about time travel. After a few minutes Mr. Latimer came down to usher us upstairs into the lecture room.

  • • •

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Your Excellency,” said Tesla, bowing slightly toward Jaya, “I propose today to address you on a subject of universal concern. I will speak of nothing less”—he paused dramatically, glaring around the room at everyone—“than the future of mankind!”

  The audience of thirty or forty men and three women—counting Jaya—sat up straight in their chairs to listen.

  “The progress in a measured time is nowadays more rapid and greater than it ever was before,” said Tesla in his quick, light, accented voice. “This is quite in accordance with the fundamental law of motion, which commands acceleration and increase of momentum or accumulation of energy under the action of a continuously acting force and tendency and is the more true as every advance weakens the elements tending to produce friction and retardation.”

  He paused. The audience had slumped a little. One man surreptitiously pulled out his watch, frowned at it, and tucked it back in his vest pocket. Another man sitting near us nudged the guy next to him and whispered, “Look! Isn’t that Lillie Langtry—the actress?” He pointed his chin at a curvy woman in an enormous hat.

  “For,” continued Tesla, “after all, what is progress, or—more correctly—development, or evolution, if not a movement, infinitely complex and often unscrutinizable, it is true, but nevertheless exactly determined in quantity as well as in quality of motion by the physical conditions and laws governing it?”

  Jaya squirmed. For the zillionth time, I wished she had chosen something else to leave as a deposit at the repository. Her bossiness or her perfect skin—anything but her patience. “Princesses don’t squirm,” I whispered.

  “How do you know? How many princesses have you met?” she whispered back.

  Mark Twain, who was sitting on her other side, whispered, “Princesses don’t whisper, either.”

  “Neither do famous authors,” whispered Jaya back.

  A man behind us cleared his throat. We all shut up, trying fairly successfully not to laugh.

  Tesla was saying, “What has been so far done by electricity is nothing as compared with what the future has in store. The safeguarding of forests against fires, the destruction of microbes, insects, and rodents will, in due course, be accomplished by electricity.”

  The audience perked up. I guess they didn’t like insects and rodents.

  “The safety of vessels at sea will be particularly affected,” Tesla went on. “We shall have electrical instruments which will prevent collisions, and we shall even be able to disperse fogs by electric force and powerful and penetrative rays.”

  That sounded like a good idea, actually. Maybe I could adapt it to solve Jaya’s problem of the hands-free umbrella. I got distracted trying to think of how you would do it, exactly—what kind of rays?

  When I tuned in to Tesla’s lecture again, he was saying, “Great improvements are also possible in telegraphy and telephony. The use of a new receiving device will enable us to telephone through aerial lines or cables of any length by reducing current to an infinitesimal value. This invention will enormously extend wireless transmission.”

  Scattered applause from the audience. “Wow, he really is a genius! He’s describing the cell phone—decades before it was invented!” Jaya whispered.

  Tesla continued, “The time is bound to come when high-frequency currents will be on tap in every private residence. We may be able to do away with the customary bath. The cleaning of the body can be instantaneously effected simply by connecting it to a source of electric energy of very hi
gh potential, which will result in the throwing off of dust or any small particles adhering to the skin.”

  Mark Twain muttered, “The very thought makes my hair stand on end.”

  Tesla paused dramatically again. “But let us turn now to a far graver question: that of warfare—and, far more important, of peace.”

  I nudged Jaya. “Pay attention! I think he’s about to talk about the death ray.”

  I tried to listen, but his language was so dense and abstract that my mind kept wandering. From what I could tell, he thought that future wars would be fought by high-tech robots deep in the oceans or high in the atmosphere, leaving people on Earth in perfect safety and peace.

  He described a new, astonishingly destructive weapon he was developing, which would draw power from the earth’s electric field. Was that the death ray at last? It was hard to tell from his description. He claimed it would end war because nobody would dare risk using it or provoking their enemies to use it. But what if a terrorist got his hands on Tesla’s death ray? Like, for example, Simon?

  I dragged my attention back to the podium. “And now,” Tesla was saying, “I require a volunteer from the audience. Today we have the honor to have among us Her Excellency, the Rani of Choba—of Chupu—that is, Her Highness, the rani of one of India’s finest kingdoms. Madam, if you would have the kindness to assist with a demonstration of what I may with all modesty claim is a unique advance in electrical science!”

  He held out his hand to Jaya. I shook my head vigorously. “He’s going to electrocute you!” I hissed. She ignored me.

  “The honor is mine,” she said in her rani voice, walking up to the front of the room. Lillie Langtry looked annoyed. I guess she was usually the one singled out.

  Tesla held up a lightbulb on a small wire ring. “I shall place this globe in Her Majesty’s hands. Observe that the device is completely disconnected from any battery or electric source.” He waved the ring around in the air to show us that it wasn’t attached to anything. “If you will be good enough to grasp it, Your Highness, just here and here.” He closed Jaya’s hands around the wire on either side of the lightbulb. Nearby stood a big, mean-looking machine. “Please observe, ladies and gentlemen, that Her Excellency is standing beside a resonating coil through which, when I throw this switch, will pass currents of a voltage one or two hundred times as high as that employed in electrocution!”

  Oh, no! The electricity was going to jump through the air from the machine to Jaya!

  I guess I must have gasped because Mark Twain put his hand on my shoulder and said softly, “Don’t worry, Leo, she’ll be fine. I’ve done it myself. It doesn’t even tingle.”

  “The currents will traverse Her Highness’s body and, as they pass between her hands, will bring the lamp to bright incandescence. Yet the extremely high tension of the currents will prevent Her Excellency from experiencing the slightest harm or inconvenience. Gentlemen, if you would assist me in closing those curtains.”

  A pair of attendants in the club’s yellow-lightning uniform drew heavy curtains across the windows, darkening the room.

  “And now, Your Highness, if you are ready?”

  “I am,” said Jaya.

  Tesla threw the switch.

  The lightbulb lit up.

  Jaya didn’t die.

  The audience went wild with applause.

  Three or four more demonstrations followed: another bulb-on-a-wire trick, some “phosphorescent lamps,” and what looked like a neon diner sign—it said Light and made everyone gasp.

  Tesla wound up his presentation with a speech about the glories of the future. Apparently by 1995 we were all going to be living in peace and harmony and riding around in little two-seater electric planes.

  As the audience made for the doors, Twain grabbed Tesla’s elbow. “Can you spare a few minutes to speak with Her Highness?” he asked.

  “Gladly. I had hoped to induce her to join us at Delmonico’s for supper, with Madame Langtry.”

  “There’s no time for that!” said Jaya. “We need to talk to you alone. Right now. It’s important.”

  “Of course, Your Highness. The club has rooms for private interviews,” said Tesla.

  Jaya, Mark Twain, and I followed him up the staircase to a little room with a portrait of Thomas Edison on the wall. Tesla scowled at it. “How may I be of service to Your Majesty?” he asked, turning to Jaya.

  “It’s really about how I can be of service to you,” said Jaya. “At this very minute, one of your employees is stealing your death ray. You have to stop him!”

  Tesla’s nostrils flared. “Forgive me, but may I inquire as to the source of your information?”

  “Listen to her, Nik,” said Mark Twain. “Jaya and Leo here are from the future. I know it sounds unlikely, but it’s true. They’re the ones who visited me from the twenty-first century and inspired A Connecticut Yankee.”

  That was when Tesla showed the full force of his genius. Most people, if told by the greatest living satirist that a pair of weird-looking kids were visitors from the future, would snort and roll their eyes. Not Tesla. He accepted it without question. “If you come from the future, you must know which of my predictions are correct,” he said. “Tell me!”

  “Well, you’re going to win the War of the Currents, but you probably already know that. You’re right about the wireless telephones and remote-controlled missiles. But you’re wrong about war and mmmphff!”

  I had managed to get my hand over her mouth. “Jaya! Stop it! You can’t tell him all that stuff! You’ll change the future!”

  Tesla swung his crazy lightning gaze at me. “But why not change the future? Why not speed humanity’s progress to perfection?”

  “Because we’re not heading toward perfection! Humanity sucks!”

  “The boy’s right,” said Twain. “Given half a chance, the average specimen of mankind is as crooked as a congressman.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” said Jaya. “Simon’s ancestor could be stealing the death ray right now!”

  Jaya and I explained about Simon, his great-great-grandfather, the repository, the death ray, the time machines, and the possible destruction of New York—with lots of pauses for me to put my hand over Jaya’s mouth to stop her from blabbing too much about the future and for her to kick my shins.

  “Which of my employees is trying to steal my inventions?” asked Tesla.

  “That’s the thing—we don’t know,” said Jaya. “It’s Simon’s great-great-grandfather, but we don’t know his name. That’s why we have to catch him in the act.”

  “It can’t be Ted or Robert,” said Tesla. “I would trust them both with my life. Maybe one of the new men?”

  “We’re wasting time. Let’s go find out—and stop him,” said Mark Twain, with something of Jaya’s impatience.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A Firefight on South Fifth Avenue

  The sun had set while we’d been watching Tesla shoot electricity around the lecture room, and the gas streetlights didn’t do all that much to illuminate the street. There were stars everywhere, just like in the country. I could even make out the Milky Way. I had never seen stars like that in New York.

  Tesla hailed a horse cab. The four of us piled in and clattered down Broadway, dodging around carriages and cable cars. Jaya unpinned the ruby and tucked it into her bag with her scarf. She sat leaning forward, as if she could somehow make the horses go faster by gritting her teeth.

  We drew up at Tesla’s lab. Tesla unfolded himself through the carriage door, and Mark Twain sprang out after him.

  The windows were dark, except for a faint glimmer on the fourth floor. “Someone’s up there,” said Tesla.

  “That’s your lab, isn’t it?” said Twain. “It’s probably him. Come on!”

  • • •

  The four of us ran clomping up the wooden stairs. We sounded like a horse in a hurry.

  The lab door opened on a cavernous room full of shadows and looming dark shapes. A lo
ne desk lamp shone on a table in one corner. The stocky assistant—the one who looked like a redheaded calf—was packing papers into a crate. The light glinted on his hair.

  He straightened up when he saw us, looking less like a calf and more like a startled rabbit.

  “Good—ah—good evening, Mr. Tesla,” he said.

  “Mr. Smith! What are you doing with my notebooks?”

  “I was working late. . . . I was just . . . straightening up.”

  Tesla pushed a button in the wall. Electric light flooded the room. We could see that an entire cabinet had been stripped bare, its contents packed in crates.

  “Why are you packing my notebooks, Smith? What are you doing with my models? Put them down at once!” Tesla’s voice crackled with rage. His Serbian accent suddenly got much stronger. “Is Edison paying you?”

  Mr. Smith was holding something that looked like a big, awkward pistol. There were several more of them in the crate in front of him. The pistol had a long barrel with two metallic rings around it and a sort of octagonal cap at the end. It had a brass boxy part above the handle and a scary-looking swirly bit. It looked very familiar.

  Then I recognized it. It was a small version of the death ray that Simon had been standing in front of when we saw him on the telelectroscope, back in the repository.

  “That’s the death ray, isn’t it?” gasped Jaya.

  Mr. Smith looked at the model death ray in his hand. Then he looked at Tesla. Then he pointed the death ray at Tesla and said, “I’m sorry, sir. I have a boat to catch. If you leave now, I won’t hurt you.”

  I snatched up the nearest object—a complicated copper rod—and pointed it at Mr. Smith. “Put the gun down!” I yelled.

  He laughed and swung the death ray around to point at me. “Or what? You’ll induce a magnetic field?”

  Suddenly the room went dark. Mark Twain had turned off the lights. Only Mr. Smith was left illuminated. “Duck, Leo!” Twain yelled.

  Mr. Smith switched his table lamp off, leaving the whole room in velvety darkness.

  I ducked low and crept sideways. Maybe if I could get to Mr. Smith’s crate, I could grab one of those model death rays myself. I had to stop him—if Tesla got hurt, the future would get scrambled up like shaken dice.