Daniel watched as Volta transcribed: OBJAY THIRTY K CARROT C CRUSH ZROW GLO DFORM U HIRNOW XTR CBR 1BLT T GO CECIL.
‘I don’t get it all, but I think I caught the important part.’
Volta read it aloud, explaining the shorthand: ‘The object is a thirty-thousand-carat diamond – “C Crush” being crushed carbon – a zero being round or, in our case, a sphere. This one glows. However, DFORM is our standard phrase for “the defense is formidable,” so I should go there and confer – “you here and now.” XTR is again standard, meaning further information – usually nothing more than where to meet – is available through the CBR station, which it might please you to know is the City of Baton Rouge. And that’s basically it.’
‘What about the “1BLT to go Cecil.”’
‘That’s Smiling Jack’s signature. In the unlikely case the code gets broken, a signature phrase makes it far more difficult for the codebreaker to transmit disinformation back to us. Everybody has a signature phrase; the names are nulls, dummies. So a transmission with a name but no signature phrase indicates the code has been compromised in some way. Even so, it probably would have been judicious to switch to a new set for this project. We’ve been using this set almost eleven months. I just hate to make the change at a critical juncture, since it takes a while to get fluent in the new set.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ Daniel said. ‘You just got it confirmed that it is a large spherical diamond that glows – exactly like your vision. Right on the money. You should be pleased, or grateful, or at least vaguely happy.’
‘I am,’ Volta said. ‘I’m also worried.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when I’m not having visions confirmed, I have to make decisions, the right ones I hope. And when you have to be hopeful, you should be worried.’
‘What do you have to decide right now that couldn’t wait on a few minutes of satisfaction?’
‘Whether to leave you here to practice by yourself or take you to New Mexico for the meeting.’
‘Take me. I can practice anywhere.’
‘At this point, only one other person knows you’ll be involved – that’s Smiling Jack. If you attend the meeting, six more will know.’
‘But they’re trustworthy, right?’
‘Daniel, it’s not a question of the knowledge being safe with them, but of them being safe with the knowledge.’ Volta paused, then added more forcefully, ‘You do understand the Feds are going to want it back?’
‘I haven’t been dwelling on it.’
‘You stay,’ Volta decided. ‘I’ll be taking the truck, so you’ll be without a vehicle. Unless, of course, you can imagine one. Now, if you’d do me the favor of cleaning up the kitchen, I’ll send some routing messages and gather my gear.’
Daniel was rinsing out the sink when Volta called him into the living room. He was standing near the door, looking at himself in the oak-framed mirror under the cuckoo clock. A Bulgarian anarchist had given Volta the clock for helping him during an illegal stay in the U.S. It kept excellent time, but the cuckoo appeared randomly.
Daniel thought Volta was referring to the cuckoo clock when he said, ‘I should have warned you about this earlier.’ But he took the mirror down, tapped the exposed nailhead as if it were a telegraph key, then pulled outward and up, lifting a veneered panel out of the wall. The panel was about half the size of the mirror that had concealed it. There was a narrow vault behind the panel.
Daniel had never seen a safe so skinny, six inches wide and two feet high. Nor did it appear to have a lock. ‘What’s the point of a safe without a lock,’ he said.
‘The lock’s inside.’
‘Well, that’s certainly a provocative approach to security.’
Volta opened the safe door and removed a small black cubical box with a short aerial mounted on one side.
Volta held it up for Daniel’s inspection. ‘The lock. A radio-controlled nerve-gas canister. You noticed my tapping the nail. I was sending a coded radio sequence to deactivate it; otherwise it fires automatically when the door is opened. Solar trigger. Fires at the faintest hint of light. The gas isn’t lethal, but it’s instantly incapacitating and makes your recent bout with the flu seem like a Tahitian cruise in comparison.’
‘Another of Aunt Charmaine’s concoctions from the concrete bunker?’ Daniel said with distaste.
Ah ha, Volta thought, Charmaine’s really got a hook in Daniel. He wasn’t surprised. Charmaine could make you feel like she knew you better than you would ever know yourself, a feeling that simultaneously attracted and repelled. Nodding as much to himself as to Daniel’s question, Volta said, ‘Yes, Charmaine. But I trust you appreciate that Charmaine’s genius for synergistic associations extends beyond mere potions.’
‘But probably also includes that powder you threw in my face this morning.’
‘No, I’ll take credit for that. It’s the inner bark of a species of Peruvian pepperbush that is dried to parchment, then finely ground.’
‘Where did that and the cards come from anyway? I saw you roll up your sleeves.’
‘I’m a magician, Daniel, remember? When a magician rolls up his sleeves, it should arouse your suspicions, not lull them.’
‘I’ll watch that,’ Daniel said.
‘Do.’ Volta removed three flat black plastic boxes from a stack inside the safe.
Daniel said lightheartedly, ‘You don’t trust me alone with the family jewels?’
‘Actually, two boxes are the family crystals – we use them to modify our CBs. The other is a taped transmission to Ellison from a group in Canada.’
‘What sort of transmission?’
‘Confidential.’
‘To me, but not Ellison.’
‘You weren’t included in the confidence.’
‘I see.’
Volta closed the safe door and turned to Daniel. ‘I honor confidences. Sometimes it seems silly, given the information. Sometimes it’s literally torture – not physically, or not yet anyway, but heart and soul. But we can’t live without secrets and the trust that bears them. You’ve asked that your ability to vanish be held in confidence. It will be. Our Canadian friends requested their information be kept confidential. It will be. How could you possibly expect me to keep your confidence if I betray theirs?’
‘I didn’t, not really. Ever since I’ve been vanishing, I seem to want to know everything that’s going on, and act against what’s expected. In a weird way it’s made me sort of playfully impulsive.’
‘I thought that might be what was going on,’ Volta said. ‘But you’re fortunate. Your reactions – curiosity, perversity, and goofiness – are much sweeter than mine, which were fits of morbidity and crushing doubt.’
‘Another difference.’
‘Yes. You’re innocent, and I’m experienced.’
‘This morning we were equals.’
‘And so we are. And so are innocence and experience. As are space and time. But as much as I enjoy our little metaphysical chats, I must go explore possibilities for practical application in circumstances we do not control.’
‘And I stay here, working to improve our control and the possibilities for imaginative application. Any instructions?’
Volta said, ‘Walk down to the river and back every morning.’
Daniel waited for a moment before asking, ‘That’s it?’
‘Yes. Beyond that, proceed as you deem wise or as you damn well please or any combination thereof. You take responsibility now. It’s yours to do or fail. Just don’t mistake your abilities for the truth. Don’t worry about the transmissions coming in; they’ll be shuttled. I’ll be back within a week. Don’t run amok. Don’t delude yourself. We need you.’
Volta drove slowly down the mountain. Red Freddie, flying in from Big Sur, wouldn’t arrive at the airstrip till dark. Volta had left early to get away from Daniel and radios and his own weariness. He planned to wait down by the river at the airstrip. Just sit in the sunlight and watch it flow. The summons to New Mexico meant everything was going to start moving fast. He didn’t think Daniel was ready and he wasn’t sure he was either. He hoped the daily trek to the North Fork and back would slow Daniel down. Daniel was too enthralled with the power of vanishing. Certainly Daniel seemed to have the gift for it, if not always the necessary understanding. That was the trouble with youth: power without point. And Daniel still didn’t trust him. Volta smiled behind the wheel. Daniel would trust him even less if he knew that nerve-gas canister was actually one of Mott’s polyresin sculptures from his True Cubism period, a birthday present from ten years ago. But that was the good thing about youth: it was gullible.