Stone Junction (38 page)

Chastened that he’d missed those points, Daniel said less aggressively, ‘But the charge will set off the alarm regardless, right?’

‘There is no way to remove the Diamond from the vault without opening the vault, and no way to open it without setting off the alarms – short of defeating the alarm system itself, which is virtually impossible. Though we may attempt it if all else fails.’

‘And when the alarm sounds, there’ll be jet fighters and a horde of marines on our ass in fifteen minutes. You have to expect roadblocks.’

‘If the timing goes right, you have an excellent chance of getting away undetected. All they have is an alarm. They have to cover every direction, while you know exactly where you’re going. Further, the truck will have a place to hide the Diamond, and you’ll be provided an identity and an alibi. So will Eddie in the helicopter, who will be attached to an actual film crew, a second unit shooting sunrises for Axel Koch’s newest epic,
Roper Man
.’

‘Is this Eddie LaRue the Low-Riding Eddie I’ve met?’

‘Yes. My apologies – I assumed you knew.’

‘Don’t you have doubts about my abilities to deal with explosives after what happened to my mother? Maybe I’ll break down, choke.’

‘The way to conquer fear is by facing it. I obviously have confidence in your courage or I wouldn’t have introduced you to vanishing.’

‘But you did consider it?’

‘Naturally.’

‘What about the fact that they’ll know the vault was blown from inside?’

Volta smiled. ‘That’s my favorite part, Daniel. All loss should be instructive. In this case, perhaps we’ll help expand their rather narrow conception of reality.’

Transcription:

Denis Joyner, AMO Mobile Radio

Hello, baby. I bet you were just twirling along, looking for a solution for these springtime, no-bang blues, and you got this paradoxical precipitate instead, the DJ himself, the ol’ Dharma Jewel, and now you can’t decide if I’m the Real Dazzling Item or just another Rhinestone Cowboy jacking his jaws to soothe the circling coyotes and keep the moon afloat on the dark waters of the human soul. All day you faced, the barren waste, without the taste, of water: cool – clear – water. Parched. Shrunk to the nut. Well, you’ve made it to the Last Mirage; welcome to the waterhole. Drink deep and sail on refreshed, real as the diamonds on your grandmother’s wedding ring, real as the ineluctable weirdness that whips us all around the circle, real as a sun-ripened grape about to get pressed. I’ll stay with you till I’m gone,’ cause you got mow-beel radio babbling in your ear, shaking it down to separate the gold from the dross, and you’re finding it all right here on KRMA, just another station on the cross.

Shamus’s scar-twisted hand was angry. The tucked-thumb jaw was almost a blur as it yelled in his ear, ‘Annalee told him, you idiot – he was her son, she loved and trusted him. She did everything but admit it that night in Richmond when she mentioned Daniel was beginning to suspect something. She’d already told him. If you hadn’t been so love-blind you’d have known right then. But you can’t blame her. She couldn’t distinguish between love and trust. Daniel is the maggot in your heart. Daniel and Volta. Quit looking for this stoned girl who sucked him off. He’s probably telling the truth when he says he didn’t tell her anything, because he’d already told Volta the minute he’d found out what you were planning, and Volta, that jealous, jealous man, arranged for it to go wrong; maybe even talked Daniel into going along to make it look good. Then Daniel almost got killed, so Volta, with his perverted sense of honor, took the lad under his wing. Daniel is the Judas, but Volta is the devil. It doesn’t need
proof
. I can taste it, I can smell it, I can feel their darkness burning in my bones, hear their treachery in every word, see them through my scars. If you get Daniel, you’ll get Volta. Do you hear me? Quit crying, goddammit! Do you hear me? Get them soon. Soon.’ THE THERAPEUTIC JOURNALS OF JENNIFER RAINE: MARCH 24

My name is Jennifer Raine, Judy Snow, Emily Dickinson, Amelia
Empty, Wanda Zero, Clara Belle. I live in room 28, Apan Hospital,
Valley of the Moon, California. Apan is a mental care facility. I am
here under the care of Dr Putney, who suggested I keep a journal since
it’s good to express your feelings. But actually, except for being bored
shitless, I feel fine.

The court committed me because I have an imaginary daughter named
Mia. Dr Putney keeps referring to her as my
invisible
daughter. Of
course she’s invisible: She’s imaginary. But Doc Putney isn’t too hot on
the obvious. Except for the
logically
obvious, that is, like how can I be
23 and have a daughter who’s 11, and why can Mia laugh and cry but
not speak. Because, Doc, I imagined her the way I need her. Someone I
can talk to without words. An ally. A witness.

I try to make Dr Putney understand that since I imagine her, since
I am her mother, I have a responsibility to her. So when that Safeway
clerk caught me stealing food for her, I was absolutely justified in
destroying three aisles of bottles and cans allegedly containing food.
I’m not crazy, Dr Putney, I’m hurt, and one reason I’m hurt is exactly
because there is no food in the food stores. Too much telly, not enough
vision. It’s not crazy to know that. I am not crazy. I have scars to prove
it. I’m hurt, that’s all, and Mia is helping me heal.

The moonlight glittered on the alkali flats as the Hour of the Wolf approached. Daniel checked his watch and trudged on toward Sunrise Mountain. He felt anxious, giddy, ridiculous, and absurdly serene, as if such wildly mixed emotions were exactly what he should be feeling while on his way to steal a six-pound spherical diamond from his government, equipped with nerve gas, plastique, and a large suction cup, armed only with his wits and the ability to disappear.

Practice had been a snap. Volta had set up a stainless-steel plate nine feet off the ground with a pad to break his fall. But he’d stuck the suction cup to the target on his first attempt and hadn’t missed in fifty subsequent tries. A rope between the brass ring on the back of his special harness-vest and the suction cup kept him from falling to the floor. At first he had trouble ‘controlling the dangle,’ as Volta said, but with a little practice, as Volta noted, he got the hang of it. Daniel found that by imagining himself as a spider swaying on its own silken thread, he didn’t feel quite as stupid.

At Coach Volta’s instructions, he’d practiced vanishing and reappearing at one-minute intervals. ‘Think of them as metaphysical windsprints,’ had been Volta’s advice. They hadn’t winded Daniel at all. He was sure he could vanish at fifteen-second intervals if he wanted and perhaps fast enough to strobe between the two states. He intended to explore the possibility after the attempt on the Diamond.

He’d also practiced his new identity, which he would inherit from Jean Bluer, who was now driving across Texas as Isaiah Kharome, freelance preacher and editor-publisher of
God Shots
, a religious magazine. Jean had sent a set of photos and a tape of the voice; the proper makeup and documents would be waiting in the getaway truck, which also served as the Reverend Kharome’s Mobile Temple. When Daniel mentioned that such an outlandish guise didn’t do much for his sense of seriousness, Volta said it wasn’t supposed to.

Various objects had taken different amounts of time to mesh with Daniel’s force field and vanish with him. The suction cup disappeared with him in less than twelve hours; the plastique had taken almost forty. Volta attributed the differences to field congruity, pointing out that Daniel’s field welcomed suction and resisted – understandably – explosives. Daniel wasn’t convinced, but had no explanation of his own – though again he intended to explore this after he’d stolen the Diamond.

But first he had to steal it. He looked at Sunrise Mountain looming in the moonlight, shifted the weight of his equipment-laden vest, lowered his head with a giggle that surprised him, and plunged onward.

Volta had just poured a modest shot of cognac to accompany his coffee when a call came in at 2.30 a.m. He answered immediately, ‘Allied Furnace Repair, night service.’

‘Mr Deeds did not go to Washington. He’s fresh from a Bent bar where he’s had about fifteen drinks with an engineer from Closed Circle Security Systems, a Pennsylvania company doing some local consulting work.’

It was Ellison Deeds. Volta sighed; it had to be bad news. ‘Changes?’

‘Additions, evidently. That’s all I could learn. The man could hold his liquor. He did talk a bit in general about his particular specialty, camera surveillance.’

‘I understand,’ Volta said softly. He paused a moment to consider, then added, ‘Well, our night man is out on call now. I’ll let you know as soon as he gets back.’

‘I’ll be at home,’ Ellison said.

Volta hung up the phone, leaned back in his swivel chair, thought a minute, then leaned forward and flipped on the radio. He sent the message in code. THINGS FALL APART. HAVE RIDE READY FOR EARLY DEPARTURE OR VERY LATE IN SCHEDULE. SEND IMMEDIATE WORD ON CONCLUSION. CHANGES POSSIBLE. STAND BY.

When the transmission was acknowledged, Volta sipped his cognac and watched steam wisp from the coffee cup. He hoped Daniel had the sense to call it off if they’d added cameras.

Daniel vanished. He waited a moment for the clank of any equipment that hadn’t gone with him, then started down the tunnel. The bunkered checkpoint was twenty feet from the opening. He was passing it when someone whispered, ‘Check.’

Daniel stopped. Then, realizing it couldn’t have been meant for him, he looked in the bunker. One of the guards was watching TV. The other two were bent over a board. Daniel stepped through the wall for a better look. Two guards, one thin and rangy, the other built like a stump, were playing chess. Stumpy, playing white, didn’t have a prayer.

‘Fuck it,’ Stumpy hissed, ‘my ass is grass. I tell ya, it’s that damn pill they’re making us take – fucks the shit out of my concentration.’

‘I took one, too,’ Rangy said. ‘All it is is atropine, and if you think
it
fucks up your concentration, someone lobs gas down here you’ll find out fast what fucked concentration is all about.’

‘Hey man, no way any dude’s gonna rain gas on us. I’ve been in the fucking Corps since ’Nam, and I’m telling you this is jacked-up, jerk-off duty. We don’t even know what the fuck we’re guarding. Whole duty, all we’ve seen is a little box go by once. Fucker’s probably empty.’

‘Right,’ the thin one said disparagingly, ‘that’s why the place is crawling with federal spooks. That’s why Keyes, the Region Supe, has been here himself for three weeks. It’s probably plutonium.’

‘That’s wonderful fucking news,’ Stumpy muttered. ‘Lay a little radiation on the Agent Orange I got in ’Nam and throw in this anti-nerve gas atropo-fucking-feen or whatever the hell it is and my balls will probably drop off.’

‘Don’t sweat it. From what I hear, Keyes knows his shit.’

‘Keyes is an asshole; asshole’s ’sposed to know shit.’

‘Hey,’ the guard watching TV hissed at the other two, ‘this is a silent watch, remember.’

‘Eat my dick, Orvis,’ Stumpy said, but he quit talking.

Daniel felt something missing in the silence. It took him a moment to realize there was no sound from the TV, and less than that to see it was a monitoring screen displaying a static view of the vault. Neither cameras nor the atropine were expected. The mission was canceled.

Daniel doubted that the atropine was any defense against Aunt Charmaine’s Medusa brew, but if he was wrong he was dead or in prison. And the camera cut at least five minutes on the getaway. He turned and started walking toward the tunnel mouth when he suddenly started laughing so hard he nearly lost his concentration and lurched back into visibility. Prison? How could they keep him in prison? How could they shoot him if he was invisible? If it fell apart he could always shoot a flare to warn Eddie off and use his invisibility to give him a big edge on pursuit. Volta was right, though – better to leave and try again. But he should look around for other security surprises. And see the Diamond. He turned and continued down the tunnel.

He reached the vault without incident. He spotted the camera quickly, but was so anxious to step into the vault that he almost missed the photoelectronic eyes. That’s what he assumed they were until he examined them more closely. Perhaps they were lasers. No difference – either way it was some sort of grid. He quickly noted their positions. He’d been vanished twelve minutes already. He could feel the edges of his concentration beginning to erode.

He examined the vault door impatiently and then stepped through into a room of unimaginable light. Bars of gold stacked along each wall bathed in the steady, dense, incorruptibly clear light from the spiral flame, slender as a thread, burning through the Diamond’s center. Daniel felt his concentration begin to dissolve, its force subsumed by the greater coherence of light. He grabbed the suction cup at his waist, desperately thrusting it upward as he leapt back into flesh. The suction held. Visible, he swayed above the Diamond, arms and legs reflexively outstretched to stabilize himself, like a man about to plummet down a well transfixed in midair. Dazed, he looked down into the the Diamond’s center. The spiral flame had vanished but the light’s unflickering clarity remained, neither terrifying nor serene, particle nor wave.

Daniel wanted to hold the Diamond. It was perched on a columnar pedestal in the center of the vault, just out of reach. He would have to vanish again and reposition himself. He didn’t know if he could muster the concentration to vanish in its field or, if he could, whether he could sustain the focus necessary to reappear as he leapt and slap the suction cup back on the ceiling. But he didn’t care. He had to touch it.

He closed his eyes but it was hopeless. He could not gather himself out of the light. Couldn’t separate his center from the Diamond’s. He kept his eyes shut and tried to imagine the Diamond in his hands. He could see the Diamond clearly in his mind, but not in his hands, not touching. He opened his eyes and looked into the center of the Diamond, surrendering his concentration, his will and desire. When he vanished, the Diamond vanished also, though its light remained constant. Daniel picked it up gently, slipped it into the velvet pouch he’d brought, and walked quickly through the gold bars and the western vault wall and through the mountain. Even inside the velvet pouch, which had a thin lead sheet between the doubled material, the light was undiminished. He lifted it to his face and looked deeply into the light. At its center was the spiral flame again, the Diamond in the raven’s beak, the open window, the mirror shattering, Annalee screaming, ‘Run, Daniel!’ And then he was staggering on the moonlit plain, the pouch heavy in his hand, the light gone. He opened the pouch and looked inside. The Diamond was still glowing, but he couldn’t see the spiral flame. He lifted his hand and touched a face, a face he couldn’t imagine as his own.