Stone Junction (47 page)

He was thinking about drawing a blind
yes
or
no
from a hat when it struck him that he had never tried looking into the Diamond’s center with his eyes closed. He pulled over at the next rest area and vanished with the Diamond. He looked into its center steadily and then closed his eyes. He saw an after-image of the spiral flame that faded quickly. He could imagine the Diamond, see the flame center clearly, but could not see inside it. After an hour, he forced himself to reappear with the Diamond and get back on the road.

He received two signs almost immediately. The first was premonitory: a mileage sign that read GLOBE 37. The second sign was so direct Daniel stopped the moment he saw it. The sign was on the wall of a fire-gutted gas station, written large on the outside face of the cinderblocks; the heat-blistered paint had peeled and fallen away, and of what was once a list of parts and services, all that remained were:

AKES

ARK PLUG

VOLTA REGULAT

The phone booth at the far end of the lot was unscathed except for a lingering odor of damp smoke.

Volta answered on the first ring: ‘Allied Furnace Repair, Night Service.’

Daniel said, ‘The place I’m calling from advertises “akes, ark plugs, volta regulats.” It left me no choice.’

‘Well,’ Volta replied mildly, ‘I’m glad to see you’re beginning to develop a sense of humor. You’re going to need it. First of all––’

‘I have doubts about the privacy of this line,’ Daniel interrupted, adding, to explain his apparent rudeness, ‘before we get started.’

‘No, the line is secure. But I surmise by your doubts that you already know your traveling identity has been compromised.’

‘So I’ve gathered.’

‘Listen while I explain what happened. Listen carefully. It’s a revelatory explanation.’

Daniel listened as instructed. As Volta described Dredneau’s torture, Daniel closed his eyes and slumped back against the phone-booth wall. He could feel what was coming in Volta’s voice from the slight tremor at the end of each precise statement, feel it in the precision itself, and when Volta revealed that the man who’d tortured Dredneau had also shot his mother for no reason, Daniel softly cried, ‘Ohhh no. No.’

Volta paused a moment, then continued, ‘Subsequently, through some inspired work by Smiling Jack, we learned the code name of the person who betrayed the Livermore theft to the CIA.’ Volta stopped and waited.

Daniel, too stunned to think, took a deep breath. ‘The killer and the snitch – you didn’t mention their names.’

‘Daniel,’ Volta said evenly, ‘I will give you the names when you bring me the Diamond. I promised you in the hospital, the first time we met, that I would do everything I could to help you find your mother’s killer, and now he is known. I’ve honored my promise. Daniel, you vowed that in exchange for my help you would share with me the privilege of beholding the Diamond and the responsibility of returning it to hiding, safe from us all. You haven’t honored your promise, and even granting extraordinary circumstances, that shows an utter lack of respect for me, and yourself. If you want to revenge your mother, you must honor your promise with the Diamond. That’s fair.’

Daniel howled, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do? Terrorize him until he kills himself?’ Daniel hurled the phone at the glass wall but the cord was too short and snapped back against his wrist. He grabbed it and slammed it down on the hook.

He stormed back to his truck, started it, then turned it off and slumped back in the seat. ‘It’s fair, it’s fair, goddammit, it’s
fair
. But I
didn’t
want to know, don’t need decisions.’ He walked resolutely back to the phone booth and redialed Volta’s number.

Volta again answered on the first ring. He didn’t seem surprised to hear Daniel say, ‘You’re right, it
is
fair. But I’m going to keep the Diamond until I see inside it, or through it, or whatever it allows me to do. I want to see inside this Diamond a thousand times more than I want to revenge my mother’s death – and even though Wild Bill cleaned out most of that cold frenzy, I would still revenge it. Do you understand what I’m saying? That as much as I would like justice for my mother, it’s nothing compared to my desire to open the Diamond. I need you to let me go. I need your blessing.’

‘I’ve already let the Diamond go, Daniel, and I think the only way it will ever open for you is to let it go. You’re free to do as you can, free to go, free to return. I have no claims on your soul. I wish you luck, and I wish you success. But I
will not
give my blessings because I believe the Diamond will destroy you. It may destroy you beautifully, magnificently, but it will destroy you, Daniel, and I will
not
bless pointless waste.’

‘It
wants
me to see. I can
feel
it.’

‘It’s a mirror, Daniel. Just another mirror.’

‘I think it’s a window. A door.’

‘Know thyself,’ Volta said, ‘and to thine own self be true. I have too much admiration for you to deny your right to explore as you must. But I wouldn’t be true to myself – or you – if I didn’t tell
you
I think you’ll be destroyed, and that if you are, Daniel, it will break my heart.’

‘But you don’t understand––’

‘Perhaps not,’ Volta cut in. ‘I grant that possibility. But then, maybe you don’t understand. Maybe you’re obsessed, powerless against the Diamond, or simply too young to know better.’

‘It’s possible,’ Daniel said. ‘But that’s what I’m committed to finding out.’

‘May you find what you seek.’

Daniel smiled in the dark phone booth. ‘That sounded like a blessing to me.’

‘Then may you find what you deserve.’

‘I’ll take that as a blessing, too. I’ve
earned
this right, Volta, and though you truly helped me earn it – for which you have my endless gratitude – it’s mine. And this is what I’m feeling in my marrow: It is mine not because I earned it or physically possess it; the Diamond is mine by destiny.’

Volta said, ‘Be thrice blessed then. I’ll add an ancient Estonian blessing: “May your journey have an end.” The Diamond is your responsibility now.’

Daniel said quickly, ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way. But as part of my sense of responsibility, I vow to bring the Diamond to you when my work is finished, or if for some reason I can’t and am forced to return it to hiding, I’d like to return it to wherever you had intended.’

‘No, Daniel. I let it go. I can’t tell you how clean it felt when I finally released it from my grasp. And for
that
lesson,
I
thank
you
. I’m going to fold up this operation now, and go home to Laurel Creek Hollow. You have the routing numbers; the direct line is seven multiplied by the day of the month. Call if you want, or come visit. I’ll guarantee your welcome but not my assistance; that will depend on the wisdom of what you need and my capacity and inclination to provide it. Let us take our leave as friends.’

‘That’s all I wanted,’ Daniel said, his eyes burning with tears. ‘Thank you.’

‘Good-bye, Daniel,’ Volta said.

‘Thank you,’ Daniel repeated. ‘Yes, good night. I’ll be in touch.’

They hung up at the same time.

Volta spent the rest of the night on the phone and radio dismantling the operation and reassigning people and resources to other projects. Ellison Deeds, Jean Bluer, and Smiling Jack were all in the field somewhere, so he left messages to call him upon their respective returns. He packed equipment till well after sunrise, then slept fitfully for a few hours. He lay in bed and tried to imagine what Daniel saw when he looked into the Diamond. Daniel had said he could only see into the Diamond when he vanished with it. Volta was skittish about even imagining himself vanished. He remembered the temptation to cross the threshold and keep going, consumed in some undreamable whirlpool of felicity, an ecstatic suicide. Instead, he tried a technique he’d learned from Ravana Dremier, slowly condensing himself to an essence and then separating it from his psyche, lifting himself out of himself as an objective witness, yet retaining his will to know.

He still couldn’t imagine Daniel vanished and looking into the Diamond, but paradoxically – having abandoned rationality for empathetic imagination – he suddenly understood what he might have deduced through laborious reasoning. Daniel saw a spiral flame in the Diamond, just as he’d seen it in the vision he’d reported to Volta. That explained why he’d called it ‘mine,’ and why he thought it was meant for him alone. His vision, of course, had disposed him toward seeing it. Volta was the only other person in the world capable of confirming whether the spiral flame was indeed only visible to the vanished. And both of them knew Volta wouldn’t vanish again. Daniel had perhaps chosen to spare them both the sorrow of refusal – whether out of kindness or pity, Volta wasn’t sure.

And he wasn’t certain Daniel could survive the situation in which he was so terribly alone. There was nothing Volta could do about it and remain true to himself, and probably nothing he could do even if he betrayed himself. Volta had let the Diamond go – not as joyously or as easily as he’d tried to make it seem to Daniel – but he couldn’t release Daniel from his heart. Volta understood that he, no less than Daniel, had confused the ideal and the real, but he understood, in a way Daniel did not, that such a confusion seldom goes unpunished. Because Volta had no children, Daniel, orphan of fire, was an ideal son. And now it was going to hurt.

Volta closed his eyes and tried again to imagine Daniel vanished with the Diamond, tried to see the spiral flame through Daniel’s mind. He was failing so badly he was relieved to hear a key in the lock and Smiling Jack’s voice booming down the stairs, ‘Dreamers awake!’

Volta swung his feet to the floor, muttering, ‘One dreamer’s not sure anymore if he knows the difference.’

As he stepped from behind the partition, Smiling Jack advanced, waving a half-gallon of Ten High. ‘What do you say, Volt? Let’s get really fucked up and full of sentimental despair and then finally decide life, despite every heartbreak and anguished cry, is worth each pulse and breath.’

Volta tried to smile. ‘I’d drink to that, but you have work to do and I won’t drink and get stupid without you.’

‘What work? Message I got said we’re shutting this one down.’

‘We are, but I’m putting you in charge of loose ends. You tie such strong knots.’

‘What is this, an alliance of magicians and outlaws or the fucking navy?’

‘It changes with every breath,’ Volta said.

‘Maybe so,’ Jack sighed, ‘but I’m not going to try to change your mood. Be grim, glum, and gloomy.’

‘Jack, while I can’t admire your alliterative abilities, I thank you for your thoughtfulness.’

Smiling Jack sat down on the worn beige sofa. ‘How’s Daniel? What’d he have to say?’

‘He’s emotionally ragged and spiritually lost – dangerously so. He’s trying to see something inside the Diamond that he thinks only he can behold. He believes the Diamond wants him to see inside it. He intends to keep the Diamond until it opens and he understands. He said it is a thousand times more important to him to pursue the Diamond than revenge his mother’s death. Other than that, our conversation was devoted to relieving each other of responsibilities for our stupid decisions.’

‘What do you think?’ Jack said.

‘I’m trying not to. That’s why I want you to take responsibility for the follow-through. Two things: stay on Alex Three’s identity, and do justice to Mr Debritto. Set him up with the code as we’ve already discussed. When, where, and which Raven is up to you. I don’t want to know till it’s over.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said solemnly, ‘but there may be another loose end. Shamus called Dolly this morning, claiming he has some crucial information he can only share with you and Daniel, so he wants to set up a meeting. He said he’d never heard of an Alex Three.’

‘How’d he sound to Dolly?’

‘Nuts.’

‘No meeting right now. Have Dolly convey that we’re both unavailable.’

‘Where are you going to be?’

‘Home,’ Volta said.

Daniel woke in the front seat when the sun was high enough to blaze through the windshield. He had planned it that way when he’d parked the truck facing east, well hidden behind the burned-out gas station.

After talking to Volta he’d vanished with the Diamond. He tried concentrating on the twist of flame at the Diamond’s center, focusing to a pinpoint intensity and then suddenly letting go, hoping the force of the Diamond’s resistance would collapse outward – like someone holding a swinging door closed spilling into the street at the abrupt removal of the counterbalancing force. It didn’t work.

He tried staring into the thread-thin, spiraling flame and praying with all his heart that the Diamond would open to him, let him see what he needed, let him step across the threshold clean. It didn’t work.

An hour before dawn he took out his pocketknife and nicked his left thumb. He held his thumb above the Diamond, let the blood drip on the radiant globe before he sought to see inside. It didn’t work.

Beaten and exhausted, he’d fallen into a dreamless sleep at dawn, not stirring until he felt the sunlight on his face. He sat up blinking, checked the Diamond in the bowling bag on the floor, and slid back behind the wheel.

Daniel drove straight through to Phoenix. He stopped at a Shell station for a city map, then checked the Yellow Pages in the phone booth’s directory. He found exactly what he sought in the first listing under Auto Dismantling – ‘
Aura Wreckers … cash to smash
.’ When he noticed his fuel gauge showed less than a quarter tank, he unthinkingly pulled over to the pumps. When the attendant asked him, ‘Fill’er up, sir?’ Daniel started laughing so hard he could barely shake his head and gasp, ‘No, empty ’er.’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing,’ Daniel said, more in control, ‘I thought I needed gas but I don’t.’

‘Help you with anything else?’ the attendant said. He eyed Daniel with wary concern.

‘No, I guess not,’ Daniel told him. ‘I don’t even know if I want in or out anymore, or if there’s a difference.’