Messi@ (36 page)

“Because you can only have as much freedom as you're willing to take. If you don't assume your portion, they'll take it from you. The slavers prey on the weak. The issue did seem to be solved well before the turn of the century. It's astonishing. My discoveries are everywhere, but they haven't helped people become any better.” Tesla stopped, afraid that he'd said too much.

Tesla could have told the policeman that the girl he was looking for was right across the street, and then, doubtless, the slave ring would be broken and the girl set free. But he had no faith in guardians of the law, whether in the Old or New World, past or present. He remembered Austrian border guards in Croatia, Turkish soldiers in Serbia, Immigration officers at Ellis Island, cops in New York. He had been detained, questioned, and beaten so many times by lawmen, it was a wonder he had survived to become the renowned Nikola Tesla. And there was something else. This policeman was young and handsome, while he, Nikola Tesla, inventor and neo-anchorite, showed the wear and tear of the street. His broken, yellowed teeth could barely stand comparison to the cop's gleaming mouth. Simply put, Tesla, though he barely dared to admit it, was jealous. He wanted Felicity for himself.

Joe was disappointed. He sensed that the anchorite knew something. Perhaps he was afraid to talk because he was dealing drugs out of his shopping cart, but the thought of having to wade through masses of junk to find out was not appealing.

“You see any shit I should know about, you call the precinct on Royal and ask for Joe,” he said threateningly.

After the suspicious policeman vanished from sight, Tesla realized that he'd have to act quickly. His experiment lacked only two essential pieces. One of these pieces was vegetal, but the other was human. Felicity was the human component.

To his astonishment, the forbidding gate wasn't locked. He found himself in the well-kept courtyard of a three-story house with galleries running around both upper floors. Young women in simple white dresses and Chinese slippers stood in small groups, singing hymns. They didn't take any notice of him.

Tesla climbed the staircase and opened the first door he came to. A Hindu man with a turban on his head was pointing to a lithograph of a long-haired, blond Jesus Christ. Several female students sat on the floor at his feet, listening raptly. Felicity was not among them.

“Excuse me,” said Tesla, but no one seemed to hear him. He shut the door softly.

The next door he tried presented an even more astonishing spectacle. A dozen young women dressed like all the others were sitting before computer consoles, working intently with rows of numbers. This scene interested Tesla—he had not expected the enterprise to be aided by computers. He decided to take a closer look.

No one stopped him. Color charts and rows of numbers alternated on the screens. Tesla knew immediately what the charts displayed—they were integrated circuits. He had worked on similar designs. What was being designed here? And why wasn't there any security? The thought crossed his mind that he was under surveillance and the reason for the apparent lack of security was that he would never leave here.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned around, an arm covered with crooked crosses rested there. The man rasped in his ear: “The Bamajan will see you now.”

Tesla was in danger. He resorted to a technique he had developed when he'd been detained and interrogated by men in the employ of J. Pierpont Morgan. He allowed himself to go slack within, and then he raised an impenetrable inner shield. Through the shield he could hear everything, he could even respond, but he remained impervious to psychological or physical assault.

They entered a bare room with a blank screen on the wall. Leaning back on a chair before a kidney-shaped desk was a short smiling Hindu man with a shaved head. Tesla's escort crossed his spidery arms.

“Welcome to the School for Messiah Development, anchorite. We have been watching your activities, and we have concluded that you can be useful to us,” the bald Bamajan said.

These words were nearly identical to the ones spoken by one of Morgan's enforcers when Tesla refused to surrender the patent to his worldwide broadcasting invention.

Then the bald man rose from his chair and did something so unexpected that Tesla nearly lost his shield. He threw himself at Tesla's feet and kissed his dirty bare toes.

“I don't know what you mean,” mumbled the inventor.

“This is how we welcome new Bamajans. Welcome, Bamajan, welcome!” he exclaimed, rising from the floor. He sat back down behind the desk.

“Don't you want to know why I'm here?”

“We know. You came to teach us.”

“Teach what? What do you people do?”

“We know that you are a Great Mind. We do not know precisely who you are, but we welcome you. Our psychics have been telling us for some time that the arrival of the Great Minds was imminent, but you are the first that we have had the great honor of encountering.”

Tesla, though surprised by this turn of events, could not help but remark, “Someone must have an extraordinary sense of humor to place the welcoming committee for Great Minds among the strip joints, T-shirt shops, fried alligator stands, and drunkards of Bourbon Street.”

Bamajan smiled. “The surface deceives. The Spanish style of this neighborhood is such that great courtyards with pools of deep quiet lie behind the gaudy facades. Are you interested in architecture?”

“Very much,” said Nikola Tesla. “I have studied the construction of the heavens and have a fair idea of the complex layout of hell.”

“Oh, my God! You are Dante Alighieri!” The Bamajan slapped the pate of his bald head. “I have studied your verses in school. It's a great honor
indeed!
”

“So how can my poor verses aid your enterprise?” asked Tesla, playing along.

“All skills are welcome and needed. Our leader has ordered the rapid collection of all the Great Minds in order to staff the coming messianic embassy.”

“Your Messiah has arrived, then?”

“We cannot say with any certainty. The modest mission of our school is to welcome the Redeemer. Our seers tell us that he is among us now.”

“I see.” Tesla grinned and bent his head to gather his shimmering psychic shield tightly about him.

The Bamajan came out from behind his desk again and stood behind the inventor. He took Tesla's head between his hands and squeezed with searing strength. The force was such that all of Tesla's thoughts and memories rushed forward and would have been sucked out of him if his shield hadn't been in place. But the shield held and Tesla remained himself.

Bamajan then embraced him and said: “Welcome again! Welcome to the cause of our Redeemer!”

Tesla wondered how many Great Minds had already been captured by the cult. He did not believe the Bamajan's assertion that he was the first one. He wasn't sure what the cult's real purpose was, but they were clearly bent on capturing the Great Minds and coercing them to their cause.

“I know that you are a poet, a
great
poet, but you may not understand what I am about to show you. Computers did not exist in your time. Nonetheless, I would like your impression.”

The screen behind him came to life and displayed a detailed map of the Louisiana chemical corridor. Certain areas, marking industries along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, were pulsing. Tesla was very familiar with the map because he'd been studying it for his own reasons.

“Isn't it beautiful? There are Bamajans working everywhere.”

“You are right,” conceded Tesla. “I do not know what I am seeing.”

“Beautiful! Beautiful! ‘I do not know what I am seeing!' Ah, poetry!”

No one objected when Tesla rose and headed for the door. He was not surprised that no one stopped him. They had perfect confidence in their technique. He shut the door behind himself and could hear the bald one even as he walked away: “Ah, poetry! What did I tell you! This is going to be fun!”

Tesla heard another voice, hoarse and growly, belonging no doubt to the man with the crooked crosses on his arm: “Shut the fuck up, cue ball! Poetry, my ass.”

Tesla bumped into a man dressed in coat and tails. Under his arm was a conductor's baton.

“Where do you keep the female slaves?” Tesla wanted to know.

“The what? The dormitories are in the back, in the Lord's Hands Apartments.”

Above one of the doors farther down the hall was written
THE LORD'S HANDS APARTMENTS
. Tesla opened it and struck gold. Felicity was kneeling on a prie-dieu, her eyes cast up at a crucifix, and singing. She looked sleepy but happy as inspired sounds bubbled like a brook out of her. A dreamy smile lit up her face. A faint hum like a distant beehive filled the room, the drone of other worshipers singing in other rooms. The whole building was filled with the instruments of many women's voices.

Nikola Tesla walked up behind Felicity Le Jeune and said softly, “I am an urban anchorite. I come to help you escape your bondage.”

Felicity thought about this. For days now, her bonds had been slipping. She felt freer than she ever felt in her life. Was it possible to be even freer? Her heart filled again with the joy that no longer hurt when it flooded her, but poured simply in. She had been told that when the first stage of her training was completed she would be transported to Tara, where the beauty of the surroundings came close to what she would eventually encounter in heaven. After that, if her singing at Tara soared beyond her own expectation, she might earn the privilege of moving to the Dome. There was no earthly way to describe the Dome; it was the purest habitat yet created for the suffering soul. The greatest gospel choir ever assembled, one thousand strong, would be trying on its wings at the Dome. If she was nothing short of perfect she would herself be a part of it, and thus blessed to be among the first to behold the radiant face of the Redeemer. This thought unleashed such happiness in her, her entire body shook with prickly delight. Felicity was learning to surrender herself to the joy of this promised freedom. What an extraordinary program, she thought, as she looked eagerly up to Tesla. I wonder what comes next in my education of liberty.

“Are you here to take me to Tara?” she asked brightly, her green eyes glittering with grateful light.

“Quick,” said Tesla. “Speed is of the essence.”

Felicity allowed him to lead her to the stairway and out onto Bourbon Street. It was Christmas Eve, and evening already, but neither the date nor the time of day meant anything to the delirious mobs spilling out of bars and strip joints. A throng of drunken college boys were howling up at a bare-breasted woman on a balcony. The men carried large cups full of sloshing beer. One of them began to vomit on his shoes. Felicity blinked as the strobe effects of a bar hit her. The throb of disco music poured out of the place, and she was paralyzed by fear. She broke into a sweat and looked hopelessly at Tesla. The devil, with horns, hump, hair, hooves, red tongue, stood in the doorway of a club called OZ, dancing obscenely to the horrible thumping music. Tesla shrugged. He was reminded of carnival in Graz; the devil didn't bother him.

Felicity counterattacked:

It came upon a midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold:

“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,

From heaven's all gracious King!”

Singing these words, she felt instantly better. She didn't know why the college boys began to stare at her instead of the bare-breasted woman. Instinctively she crossed her arms over her breasts.

“Please,” Tesla begged her, “don't sing so loudly.”

Felicity couldn't stop. She knew all the words to this divine song, and planted firmly on the sidewalk, she crooned:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love-song which they bring.

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing!

But the devils only got louder, and Felicity was compelled to soar above them:

A virgin most pure, as the prophets do tell,

Hath brought forth a Baby, as it hath befell.

And she knew that she was the Virgin most pure, and the molten hells were repulsed.

On and on the songs poured from her like water from a pitcher.

A woman in a yellow vinyl coat, wearing only one shoe, was distributing pamphlets to passersby. She handed one to Felicity and said through her tears, “Hallelujah, sister!” Still singing, and growing stronger, Felicity glanced at the pamphlet. It was entitled
What to Do in Case You Miss the Rapture!
Below those words was a red-winged devil standing on a replica of the Vatican, the word
Rome
dripping blood at his feet. It was the Antichrist. Written on the devil's chest were the numbers
666
and the word
VISA
.

The partner of the one-shoed woman, an evangelist hefting a huge wooden cross, interposed himself between Felicity and the mob. Screwed to the arms of the cross was a liquid crystal display panel across which ran the words of Jesus in blue.
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me
.

Tesla was amused by this contraption, and the evangelist, seeing his interest, explained: “I used to shout myself hoarse, but these sinners wouldn't listen. But they do
read
, praise the Lord's tools. I've been to China and Russia with this cross and put Jesus' words up there in their own languages. Amen.”

Sure enough, one of the college boys who had stared wide eyed at the LCD panel now picked up a pamphlet from the street and tapped on the devil's chest. “Credit
is
the devil. You can't believe how much I charged on my Visa card this month!”