“Tesla,” the vicar mused. “That’s a foreign name, is it not? Hungarian,is it?”“Serbian,” I corrected him. “I’m afraid the ——shire Teslas are ascant three centuries in these parts, having constructed Tesla Hall inthe reign of Queen Elizabeth.We are a restless people, and no doubtwill be moving on again any century now.”

“Is there any good news?' Tesla said.Who ever promised that? Who ever said there'd be good news?”

“Every living being is an engine, geared to the wheelwork of the universe." Nikola Tesla.”

“Tesla might not have invented a machine for going back in time, but Griffin thought he'd just found a way to stop it.”

“Celibacy is the Tesla family secret, passed down through thegenerations.”“Celibacy, passed down through the generations?”Victor asked dryly.I flushed. “Its efficacy is not disproved by its imperfect application,”I muttered.”

“So this Zealot comes to my door, all glazed eyes and clean reproductive organs, asking me if I ever think about God. So I tell him I killed God. I tracked God down like a rabid dog, hacked off his legs with a hedge trimmer, raped him with a corncob, and boiled off his corpse in an acid bath. So he pulls an alternating-current taser on me and tells me that only the Official Serbian Church of Tesla can save my polyphase intrinsic electric field, known to non-engineers as "the soul." So I hit him. What would you do?”