‘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.
