Stone Junction

daft old Dutch-English fool who lost control of his bladder when he was excited, which was often. Half the time he babbled in Latin and when he did speak English it was almost entirely in metaphor. ‘The most precious stone is the river in flames.’ ‘One who has a man’s wings and a woman’s also is the womb of matter.’ The Latin may have been all metaphor, too. Anyway, I had difficulty grasping his lessons.

‘However, he had a great metallurgical laboratory and a better library – even though, again, half of it was in Latin or Greek. I was just beginning to understand his methods, and with them a sense of his substance, when he died suddenly of a heart attack.’

Shamus paused, taking a deep breath. ‘That’s how I burned my hand. When Jacob’s heart gave out, he staggered against the lab table. We were in the middle of an exercise involving the transformation of silver, and when he flailed his hand out to catch himself he hit the crucible of molten silver, spilling it on my hand. In that instant of shock before the pain consumed me, Jacob grabbed me by the shoulders and, with such power it seemed effortless, pulled me to him in a fierce embrace, shuddering as he gathered breath to whisper in my ear: “Make them return to ninety-two.”’

Annalee said, ‘What did he mean, “return to ninety-two”?’ Daniel was glad she asked.

‘I’m not sure what he meant,’ Shamus said. ‘In the Periodic Chart of Elements, ninety-two is uranium, a precious metal, the last natural element – last by being the heaviest in terms of atomic weight – before the fifteen created by man. If I’d understood him correctly in our brief time together, he despised man-made elements because they were dangerous, corrupting, confusing, and unnecessary.’

‘But how could you make them return to ninety-two?’ Annalee said.

‘I wish I knew. I wonder about it every day.’

Daniel said, ‘Now I understand.’

‘What?’

‘Why you quit, and why they keep helping you: They owe it to you for hurting your hand.’

‘But I didn’t quit then. In fact, when I recovered I took over Jacob’s lab and continued my studies. AMO not only approved, they provided me with a Latin teacher. In six months of demon study I could read most of the old texts. Out of the emerging connections, I became fascinated by the radioactive elements, and, not surprisingly, uranium in particular. Old ninety-two itself, Jacob’s point of return, the end of the natural line before the man-made mutants of linear accelerators and nuclear reactors. I had uranium samples, of course, but it was uranium-235, the fissionable isotope, that interested me. But since 235 is used in nuclear bombs, the government has it all. And if nothing else in my studies was clear, it was overwhelmingly obvious that we cannot comprehend elemental powers and processes without direct communion.

‘At any rate, I decided to steal some U-235, and I asked AMO for help. They sent a member of the Star to see me, a man named Volta, and he not only turned down my request, he tried to persuade me not to attempt it on my own. He said he sympathized, but – I’m quoting – “Personal fascinations aren’t sufficient reason to commit AMO to a course of action where success would be more dangerous than failure.” Which was Volta’s elegant way of saying that the theft of nuclear material would bring down the heat so hard and hot that other projects and many people would be jeopardized.

‘I was pissed, so I said something like “Since I am going to steal the uranium for my own selfish reasons, the only honorable thing I can do is quit AMO.” And Volta said, “As you choose. Not that it’ll make much difference – the scrutiny will still be severe and disruptive. And not that your honorable gesture is pointless; honor never is. By all means, do as you will.”

‘And I did,’ Shamus smiled ruefully. ‘And it fucked up. And the heat came down. And here we are.’ The smile had disappeared.

Annalee reached over with her right hand and squeezed his thigh. ‘I can think of worse places to be.’

‘Now what will happen?’ Daniel said. Annalee could have strangled him. The future would come fast enough.

‘Who knows?’ Shamus answered Daniel. ‘They’ll probably split us up in Dubuque and get me out of the country.’

‘Suppose we don’t want to split up?’ Annalee said.

Shamus turned to her and said softly, ‘But we do. So far I’ve got you burned to the ground, uprooted, and on the run. I’d love to stick with you, but that’d be an indulgence I don’t deserve and a risk I won’t take right now.’

Annalee started to say something, then changed her mind. She reached over and snapped on the radio, looking for some rock ’n’ roll she could crank up loud. Her brain told her splitting up was the most sensible move, but her heart reminded her she didn’t have to like it.

Transcription:

Denis Joyner, AMO Mobile Radio

Oooooowwweeee! You got me when you weren’t looking, the ol’ DJ hisself, the Duke of Juice, coming at you live as I can handle on KOOOOL mow-beel radio, where you find it is where you get it, but don’t look on the dial, baby,’ cause we’re not there. We’re OTD, OD, and O Sweet Leaping Jesus could this possibly be real! It is – heh-heh – it is indeed: The Blue Man in the Silver Van come to seed your dreams and feed your lonely little monkey.

What we’re talking here is HIGH Kulture. Towering! The Immensely Outasight! Magnificent Spirit-Shots into the Void! Direct Brain-Bang Transmission Leaps! Solid-State Astral Sex-Launch! That’s right, you got it! Welcome to the Cloud-Walker Kulture Klub.

Now just between you, me, and the cave walls, kids, tonight we’ve got a bodacious show. If it don’t get you off, you must be chained down.

Think I jive? Well, brothers and sisters, check it out. We’re gonna hear Karl Marxxx doing his Number One single, ‘Undistributed Surplus Income and What It Means for Working Stiffs Like You and Me,’ featuring Peter Kropotkin on dobro and Leon Trotsky on violin. We got Jean-Paul Sartre from that new Essays-on-Tape series, in this case his neglected disquisition on postindustrial anxiety called ‘Incipient Arousal and Feelings of Doom.’ You digging it so far? Want more? Well, write this one down: out-takes from a rare Walt Disney interview where he holds forth at length between pipes of opium on Electromythology and the Tinkerbell Fetish (and hey you guys, ’fess up – don’t you remember wishing little ol’ Tinkerbell was about five feet taller?).