universe. It is not a beacon. I think the Diamond is an entrance, a door, a portal – into what, I don’t know, but I will find out. When I do, and if I can, I will bring it to you.’
Since the telephone call nearly a day ago, Daniel talked aloud to Volta to discover and rehearse what he wanted to say the next time he called. He’d been too rattled from the theft the first time, less certain. One part of Daniel’s new certainty was the understanding that the Diamond wouldn’t permit him full passage until he honored his agreement with Volta or could explain, to his satisfaction and Volta’s, why he couldn’t bring him the Diamond. Daniel’s failure to fulfill his part of the agreement upset him deeply. He wondered if that was why he was crying when he reappeared, or if it was because he’d had to return. He checked his watch: They’d been gone five hours.
He’d discovered that when the Diamond vanished with him in daylight, he couldn’t see the spiral flame inside. The flame either dissolved in the sunlight or fused with it. The spiral-flame center was only visible when he vanished at night, and Daniel was convinced the flame was the threshold he needed to cross to enter the sphere.
He wiped his tears. As he got to his feet, he was seized by a vision of two moons on the horizon, one setting, one rising to meet it in mirror image. For a spinning moment he thought the moon was setting over the ocean or a lake, but unless the desert had turned liquid this was physically impossible. But so, supposedly, was vanishing. He thought his tears might be refracting the light and wiped his eyes again, this time with his sleeve. When he looked up, the moons were almost touching, as if a ghost twin were rising to join the real moon. He watched them melt into one. The moon seemed to brighten as it set.
Daniel shook his head. ‘What do you say, Volta? Was that a vision, an optical illusion, a hallucination, or a nightly occurrence I just haven’t noticed before?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. He put the Diamond in the bowling bag and headed for his truck. When he pulled onto the highway five minutes later, he was laughing.
When Smiling Jack called Volta the next morning he had something besides his essential good humor to make him cheerful. ‘We have made Melvin Keyes “extremely uncomfortable.” That’s his description of how he felt about providing the identity of the Livermore snitch, but I thought his discomfort came from the idea that we were about to start running downhill with his nuts in our hand. I gambled that the guy was this Debritto shit, and it was. I could almost feel the phone trembling in poor Melvin’s hand. I told him I’d get back to him soon, and while I understood he could fabricate any name he pleased, dump it on anybody, I knew it was one of three people as sure as I knew Debritto did Dredneau – and I also mentioned that solid documentation brightened my disposition and excited my gratitude.’
‘Excellent,’ Volta said.
Jack’s smile broadened. ‘Let’s make it a roll – you give me some good news.’
‘He hasn’t called,’ Volta said. ‘However, the sun rose this morning.’
‘Now, you got it, Volt – look on the bright side.’
Daniel had driven an hour west, watching the mountains take form in the rising light, when he caught some words in the corner of his eye, a blink, subliminal, but enough to shatter his reverie. He hit the brakes and fishtailed to a stop, then slammed the truck in reverse and backed up the highway.
The sign was written in sun-bleached red paint on a piece of whitewashed plywood wired to a cactus:
TWO MOONS REST STOP
1 mi. right on dirt road
Cabins Food Pool TV
Daniel decided the two moons he’d seen earlier were a vision from the Diamond instructing him to rest. The last time he’d slept was before the theft. The last time he’d eaten, too. He’d been drawing energy from vanishing with the Diamond, and now maybe it wanted some back. He drove on slowly, turning right at a rutted dirt road marked with an arrow that lanced two circles.
A dusty mile farther on was a weather-beaten building with office vacancy lettered in peeling white paint. Behind the office, arranged in a ramshackle circle, were twelve cabins, none of which had been close to a paintbrush in the last decade. Daniel stiffly dismounted from the cab and looked around. If not for some tire tracks near the office, he would have thought the Two Moons Rest Stop had been abandoned. He knocked on the office door.
A short, strong-shouldered man wearing black cotton slippers with plastic soles, jeans, and a short-sleeved red-and-yellow checked shirt opened it immediately. Daniel thought he might be either American Indian or Mongolian: of all the faces Daniel had studied with Jean Bluer, this would have been the most difficult to duplicate. He judged the man to be in his early fifties, but realized he might be off twenty years on either side.
The man looked past Daniel. ‘Nice truck,’ he said. ‘That three-fifty’s a good engine.’ He turned his attention to Daniel. ‘You want a cabin?’
Daniel, about to slide into his Isaiah Kharome voice, looked into the man’s shrewd black eyes and decided to play it straight. ‘Yes, I do. I know it’s a little early to be checking in – wanted to make Phoenix, but I’m too tired to drive. Safer to stop.’
The man nodded. ‘Figured you were a guest. The bill collectors never drive campers. They like those compact foreign rigs. I’ll get you a key.’ He turned back into the office, saying over his shoulder, ‘Welcome to come in if you want.’
‘Thanks, but I could use some air.’ Daniel glanced around as he waited. The cabins didn’t look like much, but as long as they had a hot bath and a bed he didn’t care. He didn’t see the pool or the coffee shop.
The man, moving silently in his slippers, returned holding a large leather cup and a feather.
Daniel indicated the feather. ‘That from an owl?’
‘Great Horned. Found it on the door step the day after we bought the place.’ The man squatted on the porch and slowly swept the owl feather back and forth above the sun-bleached planks, shaking the cup and chanting softly to himself. Abruptly, he spilled the cup’s contents onto the decking: twelve small brass keys, various small bones and claws, a flat silver disc, a small gold nugget, obsidian shards of various shapes and transparencies, a pig tusk, and four dried seeds, each different, and none that Daniel recognized.
The man studied the arrangement a moment, then decisively picked up a key and gave it to Daniel. ‘Number Five.’ He pointed to the cabin. ‘That one there. Park in back.’
