Christopher Priest - The Prestige

"I fear I am about to let you down," he said to me when he came to the door. "Much work remains, and I know how pressing is your return to Britain."

"What has occurred?" I inquired, glad that the anger that flared between us yesterday was a thing of the past.

"I believed it would be a simple matter with life organisms. The structure is so much simpler than that of the elements. Life already contains minute amounts of electricity. I was working on the assumption that all I had to do was boost that energy. I am at a loss as to why this has not worked! The computations worked out exactly. Come and see the evidence for yourself."

Inside the laboratory I noticed Mr Alley was adopting a stance I had never associated with him before; he stood in bellicose fashion, arms folded protectively, jaw jutting pugnaciously, a man angry and defensive if ever I saw one. Beside him on the bench was a small wooden cage, containing a diminutive black cat with white whiskers and paws, presently asleep.

As his eyes were fixed on me as I walked in, I said, "Good morning, Mr Alley!"

"I hope you will not be a party to this, Mr Angier!" Alley cried. "I brought my children's cat on the firm promise that it would not be harmed. Mr Tesla gave me an exact assurance last night! Now he insists that we submit the wretched creature to an experiment that will undoubtedly kill it!"

"I don't care for the sound of this," I said to Tesla.

"Nor I. Do you think I am inhumane, capable of torturing one of God's more beautiful creatures? Come and see what you think."

He led me to the apparatus, which I immediately saw had been entirely rebuilt overnight. When I was a foot or two away from it, I recoiled in horror! About half a dozen enormous cockroaches, with shiny black carapaces and long antennae, were scattered all around. They were the most repulsive creatures I had ever seen.

"They are dead, Angier," said Tesla, noticing my reaction. "They cannot harm you."

"Yes, dead!" said Alley. "And that's the rub! He intends me to place the cat in the same jeopardy."

I looked down at the huge and disgusting insects, wary of any sign from them of a return to life. I stepped back again when Tesla nudged at one with the toe of his boot, and turned it over for me to see.

"It seems I have built a machine that murders roaches," Tesla murmured gently. "They are God's creatures too, and I am made despondent by it all. I did not intend that this device should take life."

"What's going wrong?" I said to Tesla. "Yesterday you sounded so sure."

"I have calculated and recalculated a dozen times. Alley has checked the mathematics too. It is the nightmare of every experimental scientist: an inexplicable dichotomy between theoretical and actual results. I confess I am confounded. Such a thing has never happened to me before."

"May I see the calculations?" I said.

"Of course you may, but if you are not a mathematician I fear they will not convey much to you."

He and Alley produced a great loose-leaf ledger in which his computations had been carried out, and together we pored over them for a long time. Tesla showed me, as best I was able to understand, the principle behind them, and the calculated results. I nodded as intelligently as I could, but only at the end, when I could take the calculations for granted and concentrate on the results, did an unexpected glimmering of sense shine through.

"You say that this determines the distance?" I said.

"That is a variable. For purposes of experimentation I have been using a value of one hundred metres, but such a distance is academic, since, as you see, nothing I try to transmit travels any distance at all."

"And this value here?" I said, jabbing my finger at another line.

"The angle. I have been using compass points. It will direct in any of three hundred and sixty degrees from the apex of the energy vortex. Again, for the time being that is an entirely academic entry."

"Do you have a setting for elevation?" I asked.

"I am not using it. Until the apparatus is fully working I am merely aiming into the clear air to the east of the laboratory. One must be careful not to cause a rematerialization in a position already occupied by another mass! I do not care to think what might happen."

I looked thoughtfully at the neatly inscribed mathematics. I do not know the process by which it happened, but suddenly I was struck by inspiration! I dashed out of the laboratory and stared from the doorway due east. As Tesla had said, what lay beyond was mostly clear air, because in this direction the plateau was at its narrowest and the ground began to drop away some ten metres from the path. I moved quickly over and looked downwards. Below me I could glimpse through the trees the pathway snaking down the mountainside.

When I returned to the laboratory I went straight to my portmanteau and pulled out the iron rod I had found beside the path yesterday evening. I held it up for Tesla to see.

"Your experimental object, I do believe?" I said.

"Yes it is."

I told him where I had found it, and when. He hurried across to the apparatus where its twin was lying, discarded in favour of the unlucky cockroaches. He held the two together, and Alley and I stood with him, marvelling at their identical appearance.

"These marks, Mr Angier!" Tesla breathed in awe, lightly fingering a criss-cross patch neatly etched into the metal. "I made them so that I might prove by identification that this object had been transmitted through the aether. But—"

"It has made a facsimile of itself!" Alley said.

"Where did you say you found this, sir?" Tesla demanded.

I led the two men outside and explained, pointing down the mountain. Tesla stared in silent thought.

Then he said, "I need to see the actual place! Show me!" To Alley he said, "Bring the theodolite, and some measuring tape! As soon as you can!"

And with that he set off down the precipitous path, clutching me by my upper arm, imploring me to show him the exact location of the find. I assumed I would be able to lead him straight to it, but as we moved further down the track I was no longer so sure. The huge trees, the broken rocks, the scrubby forest-floor vegetation, all looked much alike. With Tesla gesticulating at me and gabbling in my ear it was almost impossible to concentrate.

I eventually came to a particular turn in the path where the grass grew long, and I paused before it. Alley, who had been trotting after us, soon caught us up and under Tesla's directions set up the theodolite. A few careful measurements were enough for Tesla to reject the place.

After about half an hour we had agreed on another likely site. It was exactly to the east of the laboratory, although of course a substantial distance beneath it. When we took into account the steepness of the mountainside, and the fact that the iron rod would have bounced and rolled on hitting the ground, it did seem that this was a likely position in which it would end up. Tesla was evidently satisfied, and he was deep in thought as we walked back up the mountain to his laboratory.

I too had been thinking, and as soon as we were inside once more I said, "May I make a suggestion?"

"I am already greatly indebted to you, sir," Tesla replied. "Say what you will!"

"Since you are able to calibrate the device, rather than simply aim your experiments into the air to the east of us, could you not send them a shorter distance? Perhaps across the laboratory itself, or outside to the area surrounding the building?"

"We evidently think alike, Mr Angier!"

In all the times I had been with him I had never seen Tesla so cheerful, and he and Alley set to work immediately. Once again I became supernumerary, and went to sit silently at the rear of the laboratory. I have long since fallen into the habit of taking some food with me to the laboratory (Tesla and Alley have the most irregular feeding habits when engrossed by their work) and so I ate the sandwiches made for me by the staff at the hotel.