Disappointment came quickly. Once he crossed the Bay Bridge and passed through the charred Oakland hills, emerging at the east end of the Caldecott tunnel, he saw nothing but new tract homes lining the weedy yellow hillsides. San Diablo lay in a dry region beyond reach of the bay’s fogs. Once farmland and nut orchards, the area had been given over to developers with a penchant for expensive condominiums in artificial woodlands. Once a small, discrete town with an identity and history of its own, San Diablo’s boundaries had blurred with those of its neighbors, becoming one contiguous bedroom community. Only a sign at the freeway offramp remained to distinguish it from the rest of the suburban sprawl.
None of Derek’s maps showed any route finer than the main strip, a minor freeway lined with fast-food franchises and motels, few buildings more than a decade old. He stopped at a gas station where the pump accepted his credit card and dispensed gasoline without human intervention. The young attendant sat secure in a glass booth, indicating with hand signs that his intercom was out of order when Derek asked for directions. It seemed only proper that he remain inside the malfunctioning booth, cut off from all human contact, rather than step out to answer a question. He was secure in his job, and suspicious of the world beyond it.
Likewise, no one shopping or working in the nearby 7-Eleven actually lived in San Diablo. Minor miracle: A vending machine in the parking lot dispensed local maps. With the aid of one of these, he made his way to Blackoak Avenue.
His encounter with the automated and fortified gas station, the apathetic store personnel, and the fortuitous map machine gave him a sense of disorientation that only increased when he realized he was going to meet a man raised in the days of horse-drawn wagons, general stores, and little red schoolhouses. Someone who, in this bland suburban setting, could discourse about astral travel, reincarnation, and alien civilizations yet to arise. On the other hand, it was easy to see how an old man could have grown lonely and loony and paranoid living out here. San Diablo posed exactly the sort of oppressive, lifeless scene that had always sent Derek fleeing toward the heart of the nearest city. The risks of the urban lifestyle were much more obvious and avoidable, he thought, than the insidious dangers of the placid, conformist suburbs.
Mooney’s house was a tiny, neat bungalow with a roof of pink Spanish tile, set back from the sidewalk on a scrap of parched lawn. The driveway was as empty as the street, which presumably meant Mooney’s visiting nurse had already been and gone; still, he parked at the curb across from the house, watching the place for a moment in the afternoon heat, searching in vain for some sign of its inhabitant’s eccentricity. The dead grass was neatly trimmed, the fence pickets not too faded. No pentacles or runes in sight; not even so much as a ceramic dwarf peering out from under the hedge of sharp-tipped, waxy leaves. The only feature that distinguished the place from its neighbors was a wheelchair ramp leading up to the door at the side of the house.
He checked the address against the black iron numbers pinned to the white stucco wall of the house. He started to slot a fresh cassette into his tape recorder, then saw that the one already in it was nearly blank. He reversed to the beginning, and switched it on, realizing at the sound of ringing that this was his first conversation with Elias. He had to tape everything, since he was a lousy note-taker.
He heard the clatter of a phone snatched up, then labored breathing. An old man’s voice, deep and hushed, said, “Yes?”
“Hello, is this Elias Mooney?”
Suspiciously, though he’d sent him the number himself and invited Derek’s calclass="underline" “Who’s calling?”
“This is Derek Crowe. I just got your card and I didn’t want to waste any time.”
“Oh, good!” And he suddenly sounded delighted, all suspicion fled. “How grand to hear from you. You took my letter in the proper spirit?”
“I can’t tell you how pleased I was to read it. Of course I’ve heard of you, Mr. Mooney.”
The old man grumbled something.
“I’m sorry?”
“Steiger’s book?” he said. “That’s lies, you know. All lies. He twisted everything I told him to fit his imbecilic theories.”
“Well, that was obvious,” Derek said hastily. “But knowing his prejudices in advance, it was easy enough to get past them and see what you really intended.”
“Ah! Good! I knew you were a discerning scholar. Dion Fortune was much kinder to me. You know I feature anonymously in several of her books. Some of the adventures she claims for herself were actually mine. I gave permission…. I don’t suppose we can use those when it comes to writing my story, can we? I’d be accused of stealing my own accounts back from Dion!”
Mooney laughed long and loud at this, until he broke off muttering at someone.
“Did I call at a bad time?” Derek asked.
“Oh, no, my nurse is here. You’ll have to come by when she’s not around, so we can talk freely. Do you have a car?”
Derek pressed the fast-forward button and listened to the voices squeaking past. When the tape fell silent, he switched it off. Since that conversation two days ago, he had been unable to concentrate on his current project, Remembering Your Past Lives. He had felt like the Hanged Man of the Tarot, suspended by one foot; his hands were free to type, but he found nothing to say. His mind was busy with possibilities. He’d had the feeling this encounter would embark him on a swifter road to his fortune. Carlos Castaneda’s ludicrous tales of “Don Juan” had sold millions and made their author a fortune. Even a fraction of that success would satisfy Derek. Someday “Elias Mooney” might be a household name, if things worked out; and Derek would be living in a house of his own, instead of his squalid tenderloin apartment….
Of course, at the moment all that was a dream-vision as fantastic as any in Mooney’s letter. Derek was well aware that success in any form was a long shot; and this one seemed longer than most. But having spoken to the old man, he’d felt obliged to follow through. He had already boosted Elias’s hopes higher than he wished; he didn’t want to let him down without a hearing. So he’d swallowed his doubts and hesitations, and set this moment for their appointment.
Carrying a briefcase, the tape recorder tucked in a pocket, he walked up to the house, looking closely for any sign that it was inhabited by a Master of Mysteries. At the top of the ramp was a rubber welcome mat, nearly bare of bristles. He heard a TV behind the wall, voices suspended on an almost inaudible background hum. As he banged on the screen door, the voices died. Then he heard another—the deep one that had spoken on the phone—calling out to him: “Stay right there!”
The door gaped slowly, opening into shadow. Derek peered through the corroded screen and saw the silver gleam of metal spokes. The man in the chair was not so easily resolved.
Derek opened the screen and let himself in. Mooney made room, rolling back toward a sofa that ran along the far wall. It was a small room, with shelves on two walls and the TV on a third, opposite the sofa. There was no other furniture. Mooney needed plenty of room for his chair. Derek set his case down next to the sofa then turned back to Elias Mooney, holding out his hand.
“It’s a pleasure, Mr. Mooney.”
“Oh, please, call me Elias. Sit yourself down. You didn’t have any… trouble?… getting here?”
Derek had the feeling Mooney didn’t mean trouble of a simple order—trouble finding the house, or trouble in traffic. He meant trouble of a deep, intractable, cosmic nature, as if the evil powers of the universe might have been busy throwing obstacles in the paths of two Angels of Light, hoping to forestall a meeting that might otherwise lead to the downfall of some Dark Lord. Derek wondered if the uneasiness induced by the gas station and the 7-Eleven qualified as sufficiently sinister, but he decided not to mention them. An ally had materialized, after all, in the form of the vending machine. The elemental forces were in balance.