He sat in his chair and wished that she was right, that anything was possible, and he’d be able to go outside again the minute he wanted to.
His mother returned and sat. “They fly the lobsters straight in from Maine. Imagine! I can see them sitting in little seats with their seat belts fastened, wishing they were allowed to smoke.”
He laughed. “Maybe they let them smoke on those flights. The lobsters won’t live long enough to get gill cancer.”
Dinner was better after that. She caught him up on the happenings of the people in the circus. She kept in touch with them, although she hadn’t performed in years.
When he got rich, he had bought her any house she wanted, and she chose a Victorian in San Francisco with a view of the sea. It looked much like the one where he lived, except that hers was full of old circus people and relatives from overseas.
“I suppose you are curious about my suitcase,” she said after they had eaten.
“What’s it for? You going on a trip?”
“It’s for you, from your father.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Not from him directly,” she said. “From the Teslas, passed down.”
“But Dad wasn’t a Tesla, was he?”
“You knew?” She raised her sculpted eyebrows. “All this time?”
“I found out today at the funeral. Someone told Miss Torres, and I looked it up from there. Dad’s real name was George Smith.”
“Your Miss Torres is a pretty woman. Smart, too, and not one to be led about. Good for you, I think.”
“She works for me. That’s it.” This was his chance to tell his mother about Celeste Gallo, but the thought of explaining their complicated relationship to his mother was too daunting. “Why did Dad lie about being a Tesla?”
“His name was officially changed with the government. He was as Tesla as you.”
“But he always said we were descended from Nikola Tesla. That we got our mathematical minds from him.”
“Perhaps you did.”
“Not if we’re not Teslas.”
“Your father was born a Smith, this is true. But he did know Nikola Tesla. His father worked for the great scientist, and your father saw him often when he was a boy. That contact made George aspire to be a scientist — and so your scientific interest may come from Nikola himself.”
“Dad told you that my grandfather was a scientist in Nikola Tesla’s lab?”
“No scientist. Your grandfather raised racing pigeons, and he took care of Nikola Tesla’s pigeons.”
She’d verified everything he’d found online. “So, Dad pushed me to be like my ancestor Nikola Tesla, but not a drop of Tesla blood runs through my veins. I have pigeon-keeper blood in my veins.”
“There is no shame in that.” His mother gave a decisive shake of her head, as she always did when she considered a subject closed.
“There is shame in pushing a child to adopt a legacy that isn’t his.”
“Here you are. A famous man. A rich man. A computer genius. All because of that pushing. Is it so wrong now?”
“Yes.” He had a hundred things he wanted to say, but none of them would change her mind.
“I am here, with my clever little suitcase, because of these connections. Because the famous Nikola Tesla trusted his pigeon keeper more than all the famous scientists he knew.” She nudged the suitcase with her polished shoe. “Are you not curious?”
As usual, she had deflected the conversation down her own path. He was curious. But he didn’t have to admit it.
“I see you look at it, Joe. I know. In this suitcase is a box that your father gave me to pass on to you when he was gone. So I do.”
“It’s probably a bunch of useless papers.”
“Take it down to your hidey-hole and open it to see.”
“It’s a house, Mom, not a hidey-hole.”
“Does it have windows that look out onto the sky?”
“If it did, I couldn’t live there.”
“Fine,” she said. “Tell me about your house.”
“It’s Victorian, the same as yours.”
She snorted. If it didn’t have windows that looked out on the sky, it couldn’t be the same as hers.
“It was built in the early 1900s, the same time as all this.” He waved his hand around to encompass the Oyster Bar and the terminal beyond.
“Why would someone build such a house?” She sounded grudgingly curious.
“The lead engineer, the one who designed the station and its tracks, wanted a house to be built there so he could live in the tunnel system he designed.”
“So they gave him a cave?”
“It’s not a cave. You should come and see. The house sits in a hole blasted into the wall of a tunnel.”
“This is a cave.”
“But in that cave they built a two-story house — with a parlor and a billiards room and a kitchen and bedrooms, with wood floors and wallpaper and a fireplace with a mantel.”
He pulled out his phone to show her pictures. He wanted her to understand about the house.
“It looks absurd, but…” The house had clearly caught her imagination, too.
“The engineer’s contract specified that the underground house be deeded to his descendants in perpetuity, and I leased it from them.” He didn’t try to explain how grateful he was to the house. It had saved him from living out his days at the Grand Central Hyatt, where he’d been staying when his agoraphobia struck. In this quaint antique, alone underneath one of the most densely populated cities in the world, he’d felt at home for the first time in his life.
“Take my suitcase.” His mother pushed it toward him with her foot.
He stared at the simple black case. On the one hand, it might contain Nikola Tesla’s secrets, something any nerd in the world would like to see, including him. On the other, it came from his father, and he wanted nothing from him. Nothing.
His mother patted his arm, something she hadn’t done since he was a little boy. “You have earned it, not because of who you were born to be, but because of who you became. Nikola Tesla would be proud to give this to my famous son.”
Joe wasn’t so sure. The company he’d created wasn’t about bringing peace and light to the world. It didn’t have the grandeur of Nikola Tesla’s vision. Joe had created Pellucid to catch the bad guys, but he wasn’t sure that’s how it was used anymore. Nikola Tesla would probably slap him across the face with a glove if he were still around.
“If you don’t take, what should I do with it?” His mother’s eyes flashed. “Throw it away? Turn it over to the US government? They took all of Tesla’s other papers. They might want these, too. This would then be on your hands.”
In Pellucid, he had created something powerful, and he had sold it to the highest bidder. His life’s work was out in the world, maybe doing damage. He wouldn’t let these papers suffer the same fate, no matter how angry he was at his father.
He reached out and took the suitcase.
Chapter 9
Geezer studied the figures through the Oyster Bar’s arched windows. Tatiana sat across from her son at the corner table. She said something to Joe, and he laughed. He answered, and then she laughed, too. Clearly, they enjoyed each other’s company.
Easy for Joe Tesla to laugh. He was recognized as a genius, written up in magazines and all over the Internet, a multimillionaire boy wonder. Geezer had worked his entire life and never achieved the recognition he deserved. But once he had the Oscillator, that would change.
He would take it apart and figure out how it worked, then he would draw up plans for it and present it to the world. He would be known as the one who found the Oscillator. The Oscillator wasn’t doing the world any good locked away in some dusty trunk. It was wrong of George Tesla to sit on knowledge like that. It needed to be shared with the world.