Subterranean Magazine Winter 2012 by Subterranean Press

Author:Subterranean Press
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub

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Mark Twain had been a booster of Tesla, had tried to sell him and his inventions to the world. But it took Sam Clemens, that practiced betrayer, to do him in.

Sam found it surprisingly easy to destroy Tesla. After speaking at the Lotos Club, he encountered Colonel John Jacob Astor, who had backed at least some of Tesla’s projects—all it took was a few humorous remarks about Martians and vril power, along with a scornful reference to the swindler Keely who Astor had also backed—and Tesla’s goose was cooked.

Following a speech at the City Club he encountered George Westinghouse, and confidentially suggested that Westinghouse should take young Tesla in hand before his mental instability brought disgrace on Westinghouse and everyone else connected with him.

In a poker game at the Players—in which, incidentally, the banker John W. Gates won thirty-five straight hands—Sam shared a laugh with the tale of the giant pit at Wardenclyffe into which Tesla was busily throwing Morgan’s money.

Humor was the weapon that crushed Tesla’s hopes. The money men were brave enough at boardroom tables, and some like Astor had actually served in war, but the thought that they might be ridiculed over a connection with as fantastic a figure as Tesla made them blanch. Rich people were sensitive about being laughed at—more so, Sam thought, than poor people, who had more occasion to get used to it.

The financiers’ business was conducted more through handshakes and understandings than through contracts and the law. If a man couldn’t be trusted, he would find himself without friends or funds. And one of the most appalling ways to damage a man’s character was to make him the object of ridicule.

Sam avoided seeing Tesla himself. He did not enjoy his acts of betrayal: he performed them as grim acts of duty. His Presbyterian conscience was already hectoring him over the matter, and seeing Tesla would probably send his conscience into a towering rage.

The financial panic ended later that year when the rivals Morgan and Harriman combined forces to create a new holding company, Northern Pacific, to control all the railroads they were disputing. It was typical, Sam figured, that Morgan’s solution to the problem was to create yet another monopoly dominated by himself.

Renewed stability saved Morgan’s creation, U.S. Steel, though not the lesser investors who were ruined by the settlement. When asked about it, Morgan replied, “I owe the public nothing.”

The President got himself shot by a lunatic up in Niagara Falls, and Theodore Roosevelt—enthusiastic cowboy, Harvard graduate, and killer-by-proxy of Filipinos—entered the White House. The executive mansion, with its parade of Japanese wrestlers, Texas Rangers, and Indian chiefs—plus of course the antics of Roosevelt’s hooligan sons—soon took on many of the aspects of a circus, and furnished rich material for Mark Twain’s speeches.

Roosevelt became popular, but he wasn’t Mark Twain popular. To his own considerable satisfaction, Sam remained the most quoted person in the world.

The following summer Livy finally consented to be taken to Europe. She could barely walk, and had to sleep sitting up in order to breathe.

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