The Prestige (28 page)

He explained that today was going to be taken up by a trip to the railhead to collect some
more equipment.

With this I departed, and in due course returned with Gilpin to the town.

I must record that at exactly 7.19 p.m. there was a flash of lightning visible in the
town, followed soon after by a crack of thunder. There then began one of the more
spectacular storms it has been my lot to experience. During the course of it I ventured on
to the balcony of my hotel room, and looked up at the heights of Pike's Peak for some
glimpse of Tesla's laboratory. All was darkness.

13th July 1900

Today Tesla gave me a demonstration of his Coil in operation.

At the start he asked me if I was of a nervous disposition, and I said I was not. Tesla
then gave me an iron bar to hold, one that was connected to the floor by a long chain. He
brought to me a large glass dome, apparently filled with smoke or gas, and put it on the
table before me. While I continued to hold the iron rod in my left hand, I placed, at his
direction, the palm of my right hand against the glass chamber. Instantly, a brilliant
light burst out inside the dome, and I felt every hair on my arm rise proud from my skin.
I pulled back in alarm, and the light immediately vanished. Noticing Tesla's amused smile,
I returned my hand to the glass and held it there steadily as the uncanny radiance burst
forth once more.

There followed several more such experiments, some of which I had seen Tesla himself
demonstrating in London. Determined not to reveal my nervous feelings, I endured the
electrical discharging of each piece of apparatus stoically. Finally, Tesla asked me if I
should care to sit within the main field of his Experimental Coil while he raised its
power to twenty million volts!

“Is it entirely safe?” I enquired, but jutting my jaw a little, as if I were accustomed to
taking risks.

“You have my word, sir. Is this not why you have come to see me?”

“Indeed it is,” I confirmed.

Tesla indicated I should sit on one of the wooden chairs, and I did so. Mr Alley also came
forward. He was dragging one of the other chairs, and he placed it beside me and sat down.
He handed me a sheet of newspaper.

“See if you can read by unearthly light!” he said, and both he and Tesla chuckled.

I was smiling with them as Tesla brought down a metal handle and with an ear-shattering
crashing noise there was a sudden discharge of electrical power. It burst out from the
coils of wire above my head, folding out like the petals of some vast and deadly
chrysanthemum. I watched in stupefaction as these jerking, spitting electrical bolts
curved first up and around the head of the coil, then began moving down towards Alley and
myself, as if seeking us as prey. Alley remained still beside me, so I forced myself not
to move. Suddenly, one of the bolts touched me, and ran up and down the length of my body
as if tracing my outline. Again, my skin horripilated, and my eyes were scorched by the
light, but otherwise there was no pain, no burning sensation, no feeling of electrical
shock.

Alley indicated the newspaper I was still clutching, so I held it before me and
discovered, sure enough, that the radiance from the electricity was more than bright
enough to read by. As I held the page before me, two sparks ran across its surface, almost
as if an attempt was being made to ignite the paper. Marvellously, miraculously, the page
did not burn.

Afterwards, Tesla suggested I might like to take another short walk with him, and as soon
as we were outside in the open air he said, “Sir, let me congratulate you. You are brave.”

“I was determined not to show my true feelings,” I demurred.

Tesla told me many visitors to his laboratory were offered the same demonstrations I had
just seen, but that few of them seemed ready to submit themselves to the imagined ravages
of electrical discharge.

“Maybe they have not seen your demonstrations,” I suggested. “I know you would not risk
your own life, nor indeed that of someone who has travelled all the way from Great Britain
to make you a business offer.”

“Indeed not,” said Tesla. “Perhaps now is the time when we should quietly discuss
business. May I beg details of what you have in mind?”

“This is what I am not entirely sure about—” I began, and paused, trying to formulate the
words.

“Do you propose to invest in my researches?”

“No, sir, I do not,” I was able to say. “I know that you have had many experiences with
investors.”

“That indeed I have. I am thought by some to be a difficult man to work with, and very
little I have in mind is likely to turn a short-term profit for an investor. It is
something that has in the past caused vexed relationships.”

“And in the present too, may I dare to venture? Mr Morgan was clearly on your mind when we
spoke the other day.”

“Mr J.P. Morgan is indeed a current preoccupation.”

“Then let me say candidly that I am a wealthy man, Mr Tesla. I hope I might be able to
assist you.”

“But not by investment, you say.”

“By purchase,” I replied. “I wish you to build me an electrical apparatus, and if we can
agree a price I shall gladly pay for it.”

We had been strolling around the circumference of the cleared plateau on which the
laboratory stands, but now Tesla came to a sudden halt. He struck a pose, staring
thoughtfully towards the trees that covered the rising side of the mountain ahead of us.

“Which piece of apparatus do you require?” he said. “As you have seen my work is
theoretical, experimental. None of it is for sale, and everything I am using at present is
invaluable to me.”

“Before I left England,” I said, “I read a new article about your work in
The Times
. In the article it was said that you had discovered on a theoretical basis that
electricity might be transmitted through the air, and that you planned to demonstrate the
principle in the near future.” Tesla was watching me fiercely while I spoke, but having
declared my interest to such an extent I had to go on. “Many of your scientific colleagues
have apparently said it is impossible, but you are confident of what you are doing. Would
this be true?”

I stared directly into Tesla's eyes as I asked this final question, and saw that another
great change had come across his features. Now his expression and gestures became animated
and expressive.

“Yes, it is entirely true!” he cried, and at once launched into a wild and (to me) fairly
incomprehensible account of what he planned.

Once thus begun he was unstoppable! He strode off in the direction we had been heading,
speaking quickly and excitedly, making me trot to keep up with him. We were circling the
laboratory at a distance, with the great balled spire constantly in view. Tesla
gesticulated towards it several times while he spoke.

The essence of what he said was that he had long ago established that the most efficient
way of transmitting his polyphase electrical current was to boost it to high voltages and
direct it along high-tension cables. Now he was able to show that if the current was
boosted to an even greater voltage then it became of extremely high frequency, and no
cables at all would be required. The current would be sent out, radiated, cast broadly
into the aether, whereupon by a series of detectors or receivers the electricity could be
captured once more and turned to use.

“Imagine the possibilities, Mr Angier!” Tesla declared. “Every appliance, every utility,
every convenience known to man or imaginable by him will be propelled by electricity that
emanates from the air!”

Then, in a way I found curiously reminiscent of my erstwhile fellow passenger Bob
Tannhouse, Tesla launched into a litany of possibilities: light, heat, hot-water baths,
food, houses, amusements, automobiles… all would be electrically powered in some
mysterious and undescribed way.

“You have this working?” I asked.

“Without question! On an experimental basis, you understand, but the experiments are
repeatable by others, should they bother to try, and they can be controlled. This is no
phantasm! Within a few years I shall be generating power for the whole world in the way
that at present I power the city of Buffalo!”

We had circled the large area of ground twice while this exposition poured out of him, and
I kept my pace beside him, determined to let his scientific rapture run its course. I knew
that with his great intelligence he would return eventually to what I had first told him.

Finally he did. “Do I understand you to say you wish to buy this apparatus from me, Mr
Angier?” he said.

“No, sir,” I replied. “I am here to ask for another purchase.”

“I am fully engaged in the work I am describing!”

“I appreciate that, Mr Tesla. I am seeking something new. Tell me this: if electrical
energy may be transmitted, could physical matter also be sent from one place to another?”

The steadiness of his answer surprised me. He said, “Energy and matter are but two
manifestations of the same force. Surely you realize this?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Then you already know the answer. Though I must add that I cannot see why anyone should
wish to transmit matter.”

“But could you make me the apparatus that would achieve this?”

“How much mass would be involved? What weight would there be? What size object?”

“Never more than two hundred pounds,” I said. “And the size… let us say two yards in
height, at most.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “What sum are you offering me?”

“What sum do you require?”

“I desperately need eight thousand dollars, Mr Angier.”

I could not prevent myself laughing aloud. It was more than I had planned, but still it
was within my means. Tesla looked apprehensive, apparently thinking me mad, and backed
away from me a little… but only a few moments later we were embracing on that windy
plateau, clapping our hands against each other's shoulders, two needs meeting, two needs
met.

As we drew apart, and clasped hands in contract together, a loud peal of thunder rang out
somewhere in the mountains behind us, and rolled around us, rumbling and echoing in the
narrow passes.

14th July 1900

Tesla drives a harder bargain than I had reckoned. I am to pay him not eight but ten
thousand dollars, a small fortune by any standards. It seems he sleeps on important
matters just like ordinary men, and awoke this morning with the realization that the eight
thousand dollars would cover only the shortfall he was bearing before I arrived. My
apparatus will cost more. Beside this, he has demanded that I pay him a goodly percentage
in cash, and in advance. I have three thousand dollars I can produce in cash, and can
raise another three with the bearer bonds I have brought with me, but the remainder will
have to be sent from England.

Tesla agreed promptly to the arrangement.

Today he has quizzed me more closely about what I require of him. He is incurious about
the magical effect I plan to achieve, but is concerned instead with practicalities. The
size of the apparatus, the source of power for it, the weight it will need to be, the
degree of portability required.

I find myself admiring his analytical mind. Portability was one aspect I had not thought
about at all, but of course this is a critical factor for a touring magician.

He has already drawn up rough plans, and has banished me to the distractions of Colorado
Springs for two days, while he visits Denver to acquire the constituent parts.

Tesla's reaction to my project has finally convinced me of something that until now I have
only suspected. Borden has not been to Tesla!

I am learning about my old adversary. Through Olivia he was trying to misdirect me. His
illusion uses the sort of flashy effects that ordinary people think are the power of
electricity, but are in fact nothing more than flashy effects. He thought I would go on a
wild-goose chase, while Tesla and I are actually confronting the heart of the hidden
energy itself.

But Tesla works slowly! I am anxious about the passage of time. Naïvely I had thought that
once I commissioned Tesla it would be a matter of hours before he produced the mechanism I
required. I see, by the abstracted expression he bears as he mutters to himself, that I
have started a process of invention that might know no practical end. (In an aside, Mr
Alley confirmed that Tesla sometimes worries at a problem for months.)

I have firm bookings in England in October and November, and must be home well before the
first of them.

I have two idle days until Tesla returns, and so I suppose I might use the time to
research train and ship timetables. I find that America, a country great in many things,
is not good at providing such information.

21st July 1900

Tesla's work apparently proceeds well. I am allowed to visit his laboratory every two
days, and although I have seen something of the apparatus there has been no question yet
of a demonstration. Today I found him tinkering with his research experiments. He seemed
abstracted by them and was partly irritated and partly puzzled to see me.

4th August 1900

Violent thunderstorms have been playing around Pike's Peak for three days, casting me into
gloom and frustration. I know that Tesla will be involved with his own experiments, not
with mine.

The days are slipping by. I must be aboard the train out of Denver before the end of this
month!

8th August 1900

Tesla told me on my arrival at the laboratory this morning that my apparatus was ready for
demonstration, and in a state of great excitement I readied myself to see it. When it came
to it, though, the thing refused to function, and after I had watched Tesla fiddling with
some of the wiring for more than three hours I returned here to the hotel.

I am told by the First Colorado Bank that more of my money should be available in a day or
two. Perhaps that will spur Tesla to greater efforts!