The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [95]
"Whenever I feel drowsy, I sit just so with my hand holding these over the bowl and let myself drift into that in-between territory. If I fall asleep, the balls drop from my hand and the clanging brings me back—I'm somewhat deaf, I need a good racket to do the job; I quickly pick the balls up and float away again. The more I practice, the longer I'm able to stay there. The thoughts come. Good things result. Any man can train himself to learn this technique, and I have found that with an hour or two spent in this productive state, I feel more rested than after a full eight hours in bed."
"Why, this is very much like the meditative states attained by the yogis in the Far East," said Presto.
"Is that a fact?" said Edison, who had not paid much attention to the other men beyond an occasional friendly glance. "I'm very interested to know this; are you a Hindu yourself?"
"I am the Episcopalian son of an Irish-Catholic mother and a Muslim father who fled a Hindu culture to live in England," said Presto with a bow.
"Well, America certainly sounds like the right place for you."
With a glance at his pocket watch, Jack suggested they not take up too much of Mr. Edison's valuable time but should proceed with their reason for the visit. Edison, who seemed more grateful for the interruption than annoyed, marched them through the massive laboratories they'd glimpsed through the windows. Sixty full-time employees did the lab work, as teams assigned to various projects. Most of Edison's time was now taken up with administrative details, he explained grumpily; his investors insisted on it. Money drove everything now, not like the good old days in Menlo Park when energy was boundless and trust of one's fellows came unquestioned.
They left the main building, walked to a far corner of the quad, and entered a low oblong wooden shack fifty feet long, topped by a strange sloping hinged roof. Black tar paper covered the interior walls; black curtains draped a small raised platform at the far end. Doyle decided the hinging at the tops of the wall allowed the roof to slide open, for what reason he could not imagine. The men took seats on folding chairs before a square white screen hanging straight down from the ceiling, while Edison disappeared behind a black box of curtains at the back.
The room went dark and Doyle took advantage of the pause to lean over to Jack and ask, "How did you come to know him?"
"Came to his door unannounced. Three years ago when I reenlisted," said Jack. "Identified myself, showed my credentials: agent to the Crown."
"Why?"
"Mysteries I'd come across. Ideas. Questions I wanted to ask. He was surprisingly cooperative; he found me quite exotic. I lived on the grounds for two months. He told his people I was a visiting engineer. We shared a few ideas for applications of his new technologies...."
A rhythmic humming issuing from behind the curtain cut him off; moments later a narrow beam of light shot out of a peephole cut in its center, flooding the screen with a square of brightness painful to the eye.
Edison reappeared and stood beside them. Writhing black squiggles danced across the screen.
"Dust on the lens," he explained. "There is some extraneous footage attached to the front of the reel, Jack, but be patient; this does lead to the material you asked me to show you."
The screen went dark again, and then suddenly two prizefighters appeared before them, circling around a roped-off ring, slapping punches at each other; there was no sound, the image leeched of color to a flat black and white and the figures moved with an almost comical jumpiness, but the spooky, larger-than-life spectacle appearing out of thin air astonished them.
"That's Gentleman Jim Corbett, world heavyweight champion," said Edison, pointing to the larger of the men. "Filmed in this same room a few months ago. His opponent's a local fellow we recruited from an obscurity—"
On the screen, Corbett floored the man with a single punch.
"—to which he quickly returned."
The image changed to an exterior landscape; a train tunnel