Stone 588 (15 page)

"Nap," Libby slurred.

"Do you mind if I just snooze here on the couch?"

Libby was already oblivious.

The stone.

It was thrown, among others of its kind, like a fistful of sand through the circumferential white light that lay beyond what is now known as the universe.

There was no time then. Time had not yet begun. Nor was there space, there being no matter for space to be between.

The stone and others of its kind were given to the void, sent scattering at speeds that covered distances never measured. They were forethoughts and were well on their way when the idea of the universe detonated.

Although comparatively less than motes, they were not affected by the violent energy caused by the bursting of that idea, were not deterred by the blast or heat of it or the gaseous clouds that were soon all about. They passed easily through those yet individual atoms of hydrogen and helium, which were, after all, a mere one hundred millionth of an inch in size.

At numerous points along the course of the stone those gases swirled into knots, gathered and tightened and formed. Colonies of such formations were everywhere. More than a hundred billion of them occupied the vastness.

Galaxies.

Each with a hundred billion stars.

They incandesced. Some were like the strewing of brilliant jewels, others resembled the fiery yawns of furnaces. Pretty sights. They pinwheeled, and in their spiraling appeared to be throwing off, while actually they were accumulating, attracting more and more star matter into their galactic arms.

There was space now.

And time and distance.

The stone was 96,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ninety-six billion trillion) miles from its origin, had been under way for fifteen billion years. It had passed by countless newly hatched stars that were glowing baby blue with white centers, like blue ova. Giant orange and red stars, spendthrifts, rapidly depleting their energy. Faint wispy tendrils of tiny stars playing follow-the-leader, swarms of them huddling as though to gossip. The stone shot close by fresh stars that had just shed their dusty coats and revealed their shining nudity. Unstable ones that could only bob and blink. Some that had halos, solitary wanderers, drifters. Others like blazing bullies a hundred million miles in diameter, ready to take on anything.

Keeping to its course, the stone, among others, passed through an enormous cloud of black dust and emerged above the spiraling arm of a particular galaxy. It centered its intent upon the trailing fringe of that arm and continued on, to where a certain star was in its nascency, pulling knots of gas and dust into a core, an organization other nearby gases and dust could not resist. They helped to form a glowing hot sphere.

It was the second time this star had been bom. Previously it had burned itself out and collapsed under its own weight and exploded, fragmenting itself in all directions.

Now, once again, it had gathered the proximate bits and pieces.

Not all of them, however.

Some matter, like rebellious factions, refused to be included. It bunched on its own, formed fifty-two separate bodies.

Forty-three moons.

Nine planets.

They didn't go anywhere; couldn't, actually. Bound by the invisible tether of the star, they circled it, as though taunting, out of futility.

For the stone, among others of its kind, one of those planets was destination—the planet that was 8,000 miles in diameter. The outer layers of the planet were still in their molten state; nevertheless the stone plunged right in, penetrated the upper mantle to the depth of a hundred and ten miles.

The stone was not in any way altered as a result of its journey, nor was it affected by the heat and pressure of its environment within the planet. It was not alone there. All around, numerous elements were joining one another.

Calcium, chromium, silicon, and oxygen combined into cubic crystals to become garnets.

Potassium, aluminum, magnesium, iron, lithium, silicon, and oxygen made mica.

Titanium, potassium, and some others in certain amounts joined together to create monoclinic crystals of phlogopite.

Carbon, shunning any association, as though entirely self-satisfied, replicated its cubic atoms into diamonds.

These and other crystals, with the stone among them, remained within the upper mantle of the planet for a billion years, until the crust of the planet cracked apart like a piece of fired pottery too quickly cooled. In many places the crust was so weakened or chinked it could no longer keep capped the pressures of the highly heated substances that lay below. They came spouting out.

One such volcanic gush heaved the stone to the surface. There it was immediately overrun and covered by a layer of molten magma. The eruptions ceased. Rains cooled everything. The magma hardened into an igneous rock, dark gray with bluish reflections.

Then it was a matter of erosion. Two billion years of it.

The rock that contained the stone was worn away. The stone peeked out. For the first time it was exposed to a gentler atmosphere. With a little more erosion it came entirely free. A rainstorm washed it and carried it a short way to where it became wedged between the spiny outcroppings of two converging rocks.

The stone was held there.

For Amadu Kamara.

Amadu was originally from the village of Banya in the Niawa Chiefdom of Sierra Leone. When he was twelve he was caught at an illicit diamond dig and taken to Kenema Town for a year in prison.

When he was released from prison Amadu was given the traditional penny for a fresh start. He did not go home to Banya. He had heard other prisoners speak of Koidu, sixty miles to the north, where diamonds were lying all around as though they'd been magically sprinkled.

That turned out to be somewhat true.

Nearly everyone in and around Koidu looked for diamonds in the gravel. And often found them. Koidu people even walked differently, bent at the waist, their heads lower than their haunches, constantly scanning the ground. The Koidu stoop, it was called.

Over the years Amadu found numerous diamonds in and around Koidu. Some small, some a bit larger, some good, some not so. As a rule he sold his finds, as did nearly everyone, to the Sierra Leone Selection Trust Ltd., a British firm that had been granted rights to the diamond yield of the area. When in 1956 another British company, called the Diamond Mining System Ltd., opened a buying office in Koidu, all it meant to Amadu was that he could take the few diamonds he found to a different man in a different buying office and receive the same unfair price.

Several times when Amadu happened to hit upon some better stones, he sewed them inside a wad of goatskin that he stuck between his cheek and teeth and trekked thirty miles east through the bush to the Guinea border. They were a dangerous thirty miles even without having to contend with the special diamond police who patrolled the area. Anyone caught in the bush heading the wrong way with diamonds was shot.

Also, finally, there was the Meli River that determined the border between Sierra Leone and Guinea. The diamond police were numerous and especially alert along the river, so it had to be swum at night: a wide river with deceptively strong currents. A swimmer did not know what he was up against until he was out in it.

Across the river in Guinea were the tents of the Lebanese buyers. They did not do business according to any schedule. There were no prearranged rendezvous. They just sat outside their tents at night and flashed their lanterns to attract whoever might be coming across. Sometimes the Lebanese paid twice as much for diamonds as the official buying office. Not out of fairness or generosity, but to feed the rumor that it was better to deal with them. Usually the Lebanese were tighter with their money, argued down the price to below what could have been gotten back in Koidu without the trouble.

When Amadu reached the age of fifty he believed he was too old to ever attempt another trip to Guinea. Besides, a younger man he knew had recently been caught by the police on the outskirts of Kainkordu, a village five miles from the border. The man had swallowed his diamonds rather than have them found in his mouth. The police suspected as much. They cut him open to get them.

Amadu was surely too old for that.

So he limited himself to the Koidu area, seldom venturing beyond the point where he could return home at night to sleep with his second and more cooperative wife.

On an August day in 1957, Amadu was in the vicinity of Dangbaidu, a bush village six miles north of Koidu Town. It was a bright, sweltering day and Amadu had no hat. He said someone had stolen his hat. Actually the Meya River had stolen it when Amadu had bent over to examine a possible that turned out to be only a worthless pebble. Amadu shouted several Niawa curses never forgotten from his childhood as he watched the river carry his hat downstream.

That was the reason he was near Dangbaidu that day. It was miles from the river. Along the river had always been the best place to find diamonds but he blamed the river for taking his hat. Perhaps, Amadu thought, he should not be stubborn about forgiving. He had not found a good diamond in nearly a month, and where he was now did not appear promising. There were not many patches of gravel. The terrain was too flat, baked hard.

Amadu straightened up and, as he'd done so many thousands of times in his life, arched his back to stretch the cramp from it. He swigged some of the water he'd brought along in a cork-stoppered beer bottle, wiped his forehead with his arm, and resumed his Koidu stoop.

Within a few minutes he found a diamond, a tiny one trying to hide among some yellowish rubblestones. It was about twice the size of a pinhead, the sort of diamond that was commonly traded at the taverns for two beers.

Well, Amadu thought, at least he had that much coming.

He went back into his Koidu stoop, kept his eyes to the ground. He was like a sure-eyed bird of prey, scanning the earth, and like that sort of bird the moment he spotted it wedged between two rocks he pounced upon it, clutched it up.

The stone.

Amadu rolled it in his palm, jiggled it, changing its position so he could examine it all around. He was never more certain that he'd found a diamond. A large one. What was it? Forty carats? Perhaps sixty. It was the kind of large diamond the buying office called a special stone.

By the time Amadu walked back to Koidu it was night and only the taverns were open. It was difficult for Amadu not to tell of his find, but he spent the tiny diamond on two beers and did not make his usual contributions to the griping about what an unrewarding day it had been.

The following morning Amadu was first in line at the Diamond System's buying office. Amadu presented the stone. The buyer on duty was not as impressed as Amadu had imagined he would be. The buyer examined the stone with his eye loupe and then placed it on the scale.

Fifty-six carats forty-one points was its weight.

The buyer offered Amadu ten pounds.

Amadu pointed out that it was a special stone.

But very dirty inside, the buyer told him.

Amadu did not want to believe it.

Very dirty, the buyer repeated.

Amadu nodded, and as he folded and put to pocket the ten one-pound notes he told himself he had not been entirely unlucky. He could have found nothing.

Dinner was served.

In what Libby called the salle d'manger intime, a circular high-ceilinged room in eighteenth-century Adams style that might have been intimate by comparison but was by no means cozy. The predominant color of the room was blue, mainly powdery and French with embellishes and borders of gold leaf. Vertical paneling all around was painted with intricate arabesques, garlands, and bouquets, and considerable plaster work was incorporated throughout, not heavy and obvious but delicate, low-relief, difficult to execute. Giltwood side consoles were topped by marbre bleu ancien and the same was laid into a pattern underfoot. Altogether, the atmosphere pleasantly exemplified the gothic and rococo taste of the mid-Georgian period.

Springer hadn't planned to stay for dinner, but he realized now that was what Audrey must have had in mind when she dark-suited and necktied him. Anyway, there he was at table sipping the aperitif, a Kir Royale. He tried to take a positive view of the situation. At least he was going to have a splendid meal for a change, and there was no guessing about that. What he could expect to be served was printed calligraphically course by course on a white card he found lying on the face of his Coalport plate. From the look of it, dining with Libby would be a good deal more than breaking bread.

The seating arrangement puzzled Springer. He was seated on Libby's right, customarily the place of honor. It was, he thought, an error, or else Libby wanted him close so it would be easier for her to take more of her well-honed swipes at him.

The girl Ernestine was seated on Libby's left and then, around the circular table, were Townsend, Audrey, and Wintersgill.

Springer hoped the food was so good mouths would be too busy to talk. He'd say as little as he could get away with, volunteer nothing, and before he knew it, he told himself, he and Audrey would be well fed and driven home.

"Did you know," Libby was saying, "in the days of Louis Treize meals were served wherever the royal family happened to be at the time?"

"Rarely in the bath," Townsend quipped.

"Their food was brought to them on trestle tables," Libby went on, "which was not such a bad idea when you consider all the boring dinner guests they avoided. Do you spend much time in France, Mr. Springer?"

"Not much." Springer anticipated a follow-up slash from her.

But she said, "Nor do I any more. The people have soured me. Better to keep one's distance and steal from their taste."

Springer agreed with a nod.

Libby's smile was soft. "Where do you stay when you're in Paris?"

Here it comes. Springer thought. "The Crillon," he fibbed.

"Excellent choice," Libby said.

"He goes to London more often," Audrey put in.

"And where do you stay in London?"