FORTY-THREE

October 15, 1888, Kokin Brod, Serbia

I could hardly climb the stairs to the roof. The guy I hadn’t seen, the guy hiding on the other side of the stairway, had hit me in the back of my head, probably with the butt of his rifle. I was lucky to still be alive. I’d regained consciousness as I’d started vomiting, a sure sign of a concussion. The back of my head felt twice its normal size, and every inch of it hurt. Only his prodding with a revolver, and the wild, terrified, hateful look in his eye, made me climb. It wasn’t hard to figure why he looked that way. How many of his friends had I just killed or crippled?

At the top I crawled onto the metal observation platform. Still too dizzy to stand, I sat, waiting for whatever came next. My wounded leg hardly bothered me anymore. Want something to stop hurting? Make something else hurt worse.

I looked around. The observation platform was all but empty. One man tended a Gatling gun on the west breastwork, although he had no targets at the moment and his attention was locked on the aerial scene above the valley. Other than the gunner, only Tesla and Gabrielle occupied the platform as my captor climbed up behind me. Gabrielle held a revolver in both hands and stood between Tesla and me, her expression guarded, protective. She looked at the blood stain on my leg with concern for a moment, but then must have decided it was a minor wound. She looked me squarely in the eye, and I read her expression at once.

Nothing has changed. I stand with my brother—my family.

I looked away, followed the gunner’s gaze and saw the most remarkable battle I’d ever seen. A mile away, Intrepid cruised down the valley at no more than a thousand feet of altitude, trailing its wake of coal smoke, battle ensigns snapping in the wind. Much closer, only a few hundred yards away, Tesla’s zeppelin finished a turn and began its run back toward the lake. Intrepid’s appearance must have caught it by surprise as it worked over the Bosnian rifles from the air. It had no chance against an armored cruiser.

“I am happy you joined us, Dr. Fargo,” Tesla said, then looked at the black-uniformed crewman guarding me. He asked a question in Serbian, the crewman answered in a voice heavy with anger, and Tesla’s expression darkened, astonishment mixed with rage.

“All of them? You killed all of the men I sent for you?”

“Not all. I locked two of them in a bedroom, and a couple of the wounded will live,” I said.

“How?” he demanded, his voice rising.

“Give me a gun and I’ll fucking show you.”

Whatever he would have answered was preempted by the roar of two heavy guns discharging in quick succession. Intrepid’s main batteries had fired, and I saw the zeppelin shudder, shock waves rippling through the canvas skin of the gasbag. The rounds must not have hit anything substantial, though; they passed through the bag without exploding.

The ground battery on the opposite side of the lake fired its two guns which bore on Intrepid. One round hit, exploded against the cruiser’s lower port-side hull. The flyer shuddered and rocked for a few seconds, but pressed on through the smoke of the explosion. Good armor, probably more than a three-inch gun could penetrate unless it found a vital spot.

Tesla barked an order to the gunner, who ran across the platform and slid down the ladder.

“He will free the men you imprisoned,” Tesla said, his voice still heavy with anger.

“I killed all those guys and here you are, same as always. There’s a lesson in that, Tesla. You can’t fix the world by just killing people.”

“How do you know unless you try?” he asked.

“Try? Jesus Christ! If killing bad people could make a place better, then once Reggie Llewellyn and I and a few thousand of our closest personal friends got done with it, Afghanistan would have been a fucking paradise! I got out of the fixing-the-world-through-firepower business because it doesn’t work, and you can look it up.”

Tesla’s zeppelin passed the house, only about fifty yards north of us and shedding altitude as it went. I heard a sizzling roar from Intrepid and saw a dozen or more fire trails shoot away toward the zeppelin. Harding had said something about firing incendiary rockets at the zeppelin the next time he saw it. These streaked out, some of them veering to the sides or up and down, the pattern spreading and losing coherence as the rockets closed on the zeppelin. I braced myself for a hell of an explosion.

Nothing. Harding should have waited until he was closer. Every rocket streaked harmlessly past the zeppelin, or corkscrewed away from it. One rocket slammed into a lower floor of the house, but I didn’t even feel a tremor in the observation platform. Tesla ran back to his command bunker, lifted one of the phones, and barked Serbian orders into the mouthpiece.

A bugle call, faint in the distance. I heard small arms fire as well, and across the lake I saw men scramble up the bare hillside toward the gun emplacements. Closer still I heard a cheer. I pulled myself up by the east iron breastwork and saw infantry swarming up and over the earthen parapets of the closer gun position. That would be Gordon down below and Durson across the lake, storming the gun redoubts. Their timing couldn’t have been better.

“Give them all the orders you want, Tesla,” I yelled to him. “I think your gunners have other things on their mind.”

Tesla and Gabrielle both came to the east breastwork and looked down. Even from here I could see the fight was savage and violent, and was going to end quickly. Tesla being shorthanded meant all the men in the gun position manned the two cannon facing west. Gordon and his men had swarmed over the east parapet and were in amongst the gunners almost before they knew they were under attack. I saw black-clad gunners and white-smocked militiamen going down, others raising their hands, and in moments it was over. Someone stood on the parapet and waved a rifle pressed into duty as a flagstaff, with the red, blue, and white Union Jack fluttering from it.

Tesla’s crippled zeppelin, still making at least twenty knots, collided with the ground, dragging its control gondola across the rocky slope of the hill. The airship listed to starboard, dragged its two starboard engine mounts along the ground. Spinning propellers broke free and pinwheeled away, slicing another long, ragged gash in the gasbag. To the west, Intrepid had closed the distance sufficiently that I could hear its deep rhythmic machinery. Across the valley a Turkish flag went up over the northern gun position—Durson’s men danced in triumph on the parapets.

I started wondering how Intrepid would know not to come in and blow apart the building, with me and Gabrielle in it. I didn’t have a flag handy but . . .

Huh!

The guy who caught me hadn’t checked the back of my waistband. The floppy peasant smock Tesla had given me to wear covered the flare pistol, so he hadn’t seen it, either. I could still signal Intrepid and the others that I had control of the house.

Now all I had to do was get control of the house.

“You’re finished, Tesla,” I called out. I used the breastwork for support and pushed myself to my feet. “It’s time to throw in the towel.”

Gabrielle looked from me to Tesla with growing alarm.

“They have the gun positions, Nikola. Is there anyone left but us?” she said.

Tesla’s surprise and alarm changed to grim determination.

“They have not won, nor will they. All they have accomplished is death and more death—and for nothing. I will not forget your part in this, Fargo. Gabrielle, stand away from the north parapet. It is in the line of fire.”

Line of fire?

He walked quickly back to his command bunker, picked up a phone, and gave an order.

I saw movement in the building compound, light reflected from moving metal. A section of the roof of the domed building, the one holding the Forever Engines, slid back. A platform rose in its place, a platform carrying the aether propeller apparatus and three technicians. Heavy cables snaked away from it into the building interior. The mount pivoted, elevated, aimed at Intrepid.

Tesla raised the telephone receiver again and gave an order, a single word. It must have meant Fire.

The apparatus cracked when it fired, but not with the detonation of an explosive charge. My scalp tingled, and I saw Gabrielle’s long hair stand out from her head in every direction. The air itself seemed to crackle with static electricity as an intense white beam flickered for an instant, touched Intrepid, and—changed it.

Intrepid seemed to waver, slip out of focus, and then it returned to crystal clarity but altered. Parts of the superstructure and hull were gone, and for a moment I caught a glimpse of another world, an orange-painted bridge lit by bright sunlight under blue cloudless skies unlike the overcast gray heavens here. Volcanic jets of live steam erupted from Intrepid’s interior, and debris from the ship and that other world, all mixed together, hurtled through the air. Among it, incongruously, I saw a green station wagon tumbling end over end until it crumpled into the ground and exploded.

A spiderweb pattern of sparks played across the surface of the flyer, like St. Elmo’s Fire. Half of the cruiser’s metal fittings glowed cherry red with heat, and the wooden deck planks burst into flame. Intrepid continued at its same speed but began listing and falling away to port. In moments it listed farther, nosed down, gained speed, and then slammed into the ground three hundred yards from the house.

The structure of the flyer’s hull buckled, collapsed. Shell lockers started to explode, one after another, lifting whole sections of hull or superstructure, twisting it into an unrecognizable pile of blackened, burning wreckage.

We all stood for perhaps a minute, watching the ruin Tesla’s weapon had made of the pride of the Aerial Squadron of the Royal Navy. Tesla stepped out of his command bunker to watch as well. The beam had also passed over the north end of the platform and the metal breastwork there and on the east side glowed and had twisted slightly, the plates thicker, puffed out like cookies baked in an oven. For a while the only sound on the roof was the ticking noise of cooling metal.

“That was from your world, Fargo,” Tesla said after a moment. “A small sample of what is to come. I was certain the projector would serve as a satisfactory weapon, but it is nevertheless gratifying to see it perform in action, as opposed to a laboratory test.”

“Two hundred men dead, and you find that gratifying?” I said.

“What of the men you so casually killed fighting your way to this roof?” Tesla asked.

“There was nothing casual about what I did, and you’ll never see me gloat about it.”

Tesla shrugged and stepped back inside the bunker. He picked up the telephone, then turned back to me.

“The projector will now destroy—or rather displace—the men who captured the two gun positions. Which one shall it eradicate first? Would you care to decide?”

He waited for a moment, as if he thought I might actually answer, and then spoke into the receiver.

No.

Tesla wasn’t going to just zap them like a bunch of ants under a magnifying glass, not after all those men had gone through. I couldn’t let that happen.

My guard’s attention remained on the burning wreck of Intrepid. My leg still wasn’t working right, my left arm had stiffened at the shoulder, and I was dizzy from the blow on the head. I doubted I could disarm him in a fair fight, but this wasn’t going to be fair.

Gabrielle’s eyes were on me, but for some reason she did not call out to the guard until it was too late. He turned to face me just as my left shoulder slammed into him and drove him backwards. He backpedaled to regain his balance and suddenly found himself backpedaling in the air. He’d have fallen straight down the opening into the attic except his momentum carried him back and he hit the edge of the opening in the platform, tumbled down flailing the air, bounced off the railing of the spiral staircase, and slammed into the slate roof with the wet crunch of breaking bones.

My left shoulder bled more than before, aggravated by the impact, but for now I just ignored it. I lifted the metal trapdoor with my right hand, let it drop shut over the opening, and bolted it, just in case the gunner came back.

I turned to Gabrielle.

“I’m going to stop him,” I said.

“I will not let you harm him,” she answered and cocked back the hammer on her revolver.

“You going to kill me?”

She raised the revolver, aimed, and fired. I collapsed to the iron platform, my left foot a fiery white-hot nova of pain.

“Non,” she answered. “I will not kill you.”

I expected the first flash of pain to subside, but it didn’t, not right away. The pain came in waves, almost paralyzing me, shutting down my brain. I caught my breath and then concentrated on the pain, willed it down, forced it into a corner of my mind. It still left me gasping, but after a few seconds I could at least think.

I crawled to the east side of the platform, pulled myself up to my knees using the iron breastwork, although the metal had become brittle and powdery, like old plaster, and part of it crumbled under my weight. I looked over the edge. The zeppelin had come to rest right on the shore of the lake. Its gasbag settled and lost shape even as I watched, the hydrogen escaping out and carried over the lake by a faint westerly breeze. Tesla’s technicians were turning the projector toward the gun position held by Gordon and his men. That made sense; they were closer to the house, more of an immediate threat. Once they were gone, the gun would “displace” Durson and his men, and then it would work over the woods up the west valley, scouring out Cevik Bey’s Bosnian riflemen.

We had all come so far together. It couldn’t end this way.

I reached into the back of my pants and pulled out the flare pistol. Gabrielle raised her revolver and cocked it again.

“I will not let you harm him. Please, Jack, do not make me shoot you again.”

Behind her Tesla looked out of the bunker with detached interest at the vignette playing itself out here.

I looked at Gabrielle, saw the tears in her eyes, but saw the determination as well. I think part of my mind had known for some time I probably wasn’t going to make it home, but right then was when it hit me with absolute certainty. I’d reached the end of the road, and it wasn’t the end I’d planned for. I was never going to see Sarah again, never see her grow to womanhood, never bounce those grandkids on my knee, but in a sense that was okay. It was okay because Tesla wasn’t going to hurt her or the world she lived in. I was about to make sure of that.

I’d already done everything important for her I could. I’d raised a fine, strong, resourceful woman. Time to let go.

I raised the flare pistol, and Gabrielle cried out in alarm, but I pointed it away from Tesla and she relaxed. I pointed it toward the eastern sky and fired. The pistol made a loud pop, like a firecracker, and the red flare sizzled up and out to the east.

“A pointless gesture,” Tesla said, having come out of the command bunker to watch the denouement.

The flare reached the top of its trajectory and started down toward the surface of the lake.

“Tesla,” I said, “you’re a real wiz when it comes to electromagnetism, but you’ve got a lot to learn about some other things. Here’s a new word for you: thermobaric.”

The descending flare sparkled when it hit the first of the dispersed hydrogen over the lake, then—

I felt the explosion rather than heard it. I felt it inside my head, in the roots of my teeth, in the pressure levels in my eyeballs. The detonation first pulled at me, trying to suck the air out of my lungs, and then slammed me a couple meters back across the roof, leaving me gasping and stunned.

I’d used the dispersing hydrogen of Tesla’s crippled zeppelin to make my own fuel-air explosion, an aerosol-enhanced detonation so powerful the first “Daisy Cutter” bombs had been used to turn triple-canopy jungle in Vietnam into instant landing zones. I’d never been this close to a really big thermobaric explosion before. I was a little surprised to still be alive.

I couldn’t hear, my vision was badly blurred, and my lungs felt on fire, but I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, dragged myself back to the breastwork, and then pulled myself up to look over it.

People began to stir in the southern gun redoubt; they were stunned but not dead. That was good—I’d managed to not kill Gordon and his people, so Durson’s crew, farther away across the lake, would be okay as well..

All three of the machinery buildings were reduced to burning rubble. Tesla’s workshop building had been torn open like a kid’s present, its contents scattered and burning, and small pieces of debris slowly fluttered upward—liftwood from the Forever Engines, a king’s ransom of the stuff, floating away like ashes on the wind. I wondered how long it would float around up there before it lost its mojo and settled someplace, like tired old helium balloons.

The key to my world’s location, the biological roadmap to my home, had been down there, too. That was one less thing to worry about, not that I thought I’d be around to worry about anything much longer.

The most remarkable sight was the lake itself. It churned and boiled as electricity arced across its surface, discharging into the shoreline, lacing through the three ruined buildings. As I watched, my hearing returned and I heard the sizzling, cracking thunder, like a dozen lightning storms all at once. Then I heard Tesla as well.

“GONE! Ten years of work, all gone! Do you know what you’ve done? DO YOU?”

He stood by the east breastwork. He ran his trembling hands up into his hair and tore a handful out, held it out as if to show me, opened his hand and let the breeze carry the hair away. His eyes rolled, were wild, incredulous, insane.

For once, I had nothing to say. There was nothing left to say, nothing left to do.

Tesla groped at his waist, pulled open the holster on his belt, drew his pistol, cocked it, pointed it at me—

A shot rang out, but I felt nothing. Tesla spun around, blood spraying from his right shoulder. He looked unbelievingly at Gabrielle and the smoking revolver in her hand. Her face twisted in an agony of grief as tears flowed down her cheeks.

“We will not hurt him anymore,” she said, her voice shaking.

Tesla leaned back to gain his balance, but when his hands came to rest on the warped iron breastwork, it buckled and crumbled under his weight. Arms flailing, he pitched backwards over the edge and fell, his shout cut off by the crash of breaking slate as he hit the sloped roof.

Gabrielle cried out in alarm and ran to the breastwork, arrived just as Tesla’s ragdoll-limp body slid over the edge of the roof and fell from sight. She gasped, eyes wide with the realization of the enormity of what she had done. She stood motionless for a long while, looking at the spot where Tesla had disappeared. Then she looked down at her still-smoking revolver.

She reversed it in her hand so her thumb was through the trigger guard, cocked it, raised it in both hands so the barrel rested under her chin.

She pulled the trigger with her thumb.

The hammer fell forward . . .

. . . and slammed into the web of skin between my right thumb and forefinger.

She had stood four or five meters from me. I had a concussion, a bullet in my right thigh, a shattered left foot, and I was on my knees. Somehow I had gotten to my feet, crossed those four or five meters, and gotten my hand in the way of the revolver’s firing pin. I had no recollection of doing it, and no idea of how I managed, but I did.

When she realized she was still alive, when she realized what I had done, she sank to the platform and collapsed against the iron breastwork. Her face dissolved in tears, her mouth an open downturned wound, like the thespian mask of tragedy, and she sobbed uncontrollably.

“You should have let me die,” she said, and she repeated it over and over. I sat on the platform beside her and put my arms around her.

“I couldn’t.”

“My only chance . . . my only hope . . . gone forever. I destroyed it. I destroyed it! There is nothing left for me.”

I held her for a while, let her cry. Even as we sat there, I knew she was going to get better. She had made a choice, the right choice, without even knowing why it was right, had made it on instinct. In time she would figure out why—family is not about shared blood; it’s about shared life, and what we give up for each other.

“You were looking for a heart, Tinman,” I told her. “You had one all along.”

Smoke rose from the opening in the roof, and I realized more smoke billowed from the west side of the house. The single incendiary rocket fired by Intrepid which hit the house must have driven through the wall and started a blaze. It would spread quickly, particularly up the carpeted wooden stairwell. How we were going to get down through that, especially when I couldn’t even walk, was a pretty good question.

A shadow fell over us, and I became aware of an irregular droning which had grown louder in the last few minutes. I looked up, and a much-patched sausage-shaped black balloon passed overhead, no more than ten meters above us. A single engine mounted behind the wicker passenger basket smoked and misfired, but kept running, driving the propeller. A dozen cables ran back to the improvised-looking rudder, now cranked to the side to keep the balloon in a wide turn over the house. These must be the salvaged remains of Tesla’s zeppelin which had crashed near Jovo’s village.

Thomson looked over the edge of the basket, eyes hidden by aviator goggles but his unmistakable white beard flying in the wind.

“Jack!” he called out over the drone of the engine. “Do you and the young lady require a ride?”