To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  "I know this isn’t a dream. I know it’s all happening for real. But every now and then I find myself wondering if it’s some kind of elaborate hallucination, if you’re a terrorist or foreign agent or something."

  "Think of me as a foreign agent if it makes it easier for you. Think of the Anarchis as a terrorist. The analogy is not so very extreme. All terrorists are agents of Chaos to some degree. All affect the fabric of existence. All alter reality or attempt to do so. It is the degree to which they achieve their aims that matters."

  "You said the aim of the Anarchis is Chaos. What’s the aim of Evil besides encouraging the spread of Chaos?"

  "Extermination of the good. I’m sorry you’ve been put in this position, Frank, but I can’t change that. More than just your reality is at stake here. Mine is endangered as well. The fabric of existence weaves through all worlds. A single substantial rip anywhere" — she drew her hands apart sharply, as if ripping a sheet of paper in half — "can shock many worlds, many lines. The Anarchis will move quickly to exploit the smallest tear."

  "Once reality gets ripped, how can you fix it?"

  "I cannot. Only the Spinner can do that."

  "What’s this Spinner like, anyway? Is it like you?"

  "Oh, no." She laughed gently, bells in the night. "It is difficult to describe. Whatever you imagine will be insufficient. Grand it is, and vast."

  "Must be pretty damn overpowering."

  "You will see for yourself when we reach the Vanishing Point."

  "You know, I think I’m starting to get a handle on this. It’s kind of like how a foul-up at a critical point affects a whole company. The ripple effect."

  "You would be surprised how few differences there are, Frank, between existential philosophy and commerce."

  "No kiddin'? I’m afraid my readings in philosophy don’t go any further than Andrew Carnegie and Lee Iacocca’s autobiography."

  "That may be, but you have an instinctive grasp of how things connect in order to work together. That is philosophical knowledge at its most practical. Reality is not so very different."

  "That so? You won’t mind if I throw out the philosophy and just look at this as a question of getting from point A to point B without getting killed?"

  "Think of it however it pleases you."

  "Hey, I may be crude, but I have shallow depths nobody’s plumbed yet."

  "There you go, demeaning yourself again."

  "Yeah. But only among friends."

  11

  When people have been married for a long time they develop the ability to sense their partner’s presence or absence, even in the midst of deep sleep. Few scientists will admit to the existence of this marital telepathy — unless they themselves are married.

  Alicia awoke and rolled over, squinting sleepily in the dark. "Frank?" She rose halfway, supporting herself on one arm. "Frank, you in the john?" She kept her voice down even though the children were in the other room behind a closed door.

  No reply came from the bathroom, nor the chairs nor anywhere else. Enough light seeped around the edges of the curtain for her to make out the dim silhouettes of bed and cheap motel furniture.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. Frank was fond of nocturnal walks when he couldn’t sleep. Certainly he had more on his mind than the future of their vacation.

  With a sigh she slipped into her robe and went to the front door. The parking lot was mostly empty, dominated by the silent shape of the motor home. Moonlight enabled her to see clear across the street, to shuttered gift shops and real estate offices. The motel office was dark.

  No familiar figure bestrode the concrete walkway in front of the rooms. If he wanted a soda he would’ve gone out to the motor home, she reflected. She retreated long enough to slip into a pair of sneakers, knotted the belt of her robe, and started across the lot.

  The door to the motor home stood ajar, a figure seated on the lowest step. "Frank?" A face turned up to her and at the same time she saw that the shape was of a man much bigger than her husband.

  "Yatahey, Mrs. Sonderberg. Or perhaps I should say good morning. The sun will rejoin us soon."

  "Hello, Burnfingers. Have you seen Frank?"

  "He’s not with you?" Burnfingers tried to see past her.

  She shook her head. "I thought he came out to talk or get something to drink." She looked back toward the motel, trying to remember where the vending machines were located. Even now he might be back in the room, wondering at the empty bed. Well, if he came looking for her this would be the first place he’d check. No point in worrying about it.

  "You can’t sleep, either?"

  She could just make out Burnfingers’s grin in the moonlight. "I never sleep. Waste of time."

  "Oh, now really. Everybody sleeps."

  "Not me. You know, if you spend eight hours out of every twenty-four asleep and you live to be eighty years old, you have wasted one third of your entire life."

  "Well, I have to sleep." She wondered why she sounded so defensive. Burnfingers’s claim was patently absurd but, of course, he was crazy. It shouldn’t have surprised her. Nothing he said ought to surprise her.

  "Sleepy or not, what are you doing out here alone?"

  "Talking to the moon. Watching the sky. Standing guard."

  "Guard?" She turned sharply. "Is there something out here?"

  "No. But if I wasn’t standing guard, there might be."

  "Like what?"

  He turned to her. "After all you have seen these past couple of days, I would not think you would have to ask such a question, Mrs. Sonderberg."

  "Just Alicia, please. It all has been real, hasn’t it?" One hand clutched at the neck of the bathrobe, pulling it tight around her throat.

  "Oh, very real. And instructive."

  "Instructive?" She laughed nervously. "Didn’t it scare you? Weren’t you frightened? But, then, maybe it wouldn’t scare you. Not after working as a janitor in Hell."

  "Many things frighten me, Alicia."

  She walked over to lean against the cool exterior of the motor home. "I bet you’ve seen a lot of strange things."

  "More than you can imagine. I have worked with goblins as well as with demons, have danced with witches who were pure energy, have attended the Old Ceremonies. I have seen the sleeping places of the Great Old Ones and read the forbidden books. I’ve traded ice for gold with people who had no water and sat at the feet of all the prophets, trying to learn from them. Jesus and Buddha, Moses and Mohammed, Zoroaster and Confucius: all of them."

  "Have you?" was all she could say.

  "They like to get together and argue. Sometimes they get excited, but they never fight. That would be unbecoming to prophets."

  Burnfingers’s talk was starting to make her uneasy. Where the hell was Frank? To change the subject she pointed at his right wrist. "That’s such a beautiful bracelet."

  "So you’ve said." He raised his arm so it would catch more of the light. A huge turquoise nugget was set deep in a thick band of sand-cast metal. "Skystone and silver." With a finger he traced the recess in which the turquoise reposed. "This is called a shadowbox. The Navajo like to wear their wealth. I have more jewelry, but it can be awkward to travel with. This piece I wear because my father made it. He was very skilled. I keep it with me always."

  "Kind of like a talisman?"

  "No. To remind me of him. Sadly, he was quite sane. Not like me. That’s what finished him. It is very difficult for an Indian to stay sane and live in your world, where insanity seems to be the normal state of affairs. Since I am mad, I have no difficulty coping."

  "You’ve had a hard life, then." She’d moved nearer and was suddenly aware of his size and strength.

  "I would say, rather, an interesting one. Many troubles I could have avoided, but to me boredom is the same as death. I would not have had it any other way."

  His black hair was inches from her hands and she found herself wondering what it would be like to stroke it, to run her fingers throug
h it.

  Abruptly she drew back. What was wrong with her? Here she was out alone in the middle of the night finding herself attracted to a madman. And he was attractive, dammit! The madness, the wildness she sensed in him, was part of it.

  "I’ve got to go look for Frank," she found herself muttering. "I guess he’s gone for a walk somewhere."

  Burnfingers knew that Mouse had also gone for a nocturnal stroll, but since he was not completely crazy he sensed that mentioning this would have had a deleterious effect on Alicia Sonderberg’s state of mind. So he kept quiet.

  "Want me to come with you?"

  "No. No, you stay here. I’m sure I’ll run into him any minute now. I’ll just go back to the room and wait." She left him sitting on the lower step.

  As she turned the stern of the motor home, she found herself confronting another male figure. "Frank! You startled me. Where have you b — ?"

  It wasn’t Frank. It was over six feet tall and thin as a rail, and though it was obviously straining to look like a man it was having a difficult time of it, as though trying something without sufficient practice beforehand. Multiple fingers kept appearing and vanishing on each hand, like the tentacles of sea anemones retracting and extending in the current. The left side of the face kept trying to melt.

  "Good evening," it said, the quavering voice a horrible parody of humanity. "Can I help you find your husbaaaand?"

  Alicia took a step backward. As she did so a second figure appeared next to the first. It was much shorter and had stringy white hair that curled and contorted like a handful of worms.

  "Is there a problem?" it inquired. It struggled to make itself taller.

  She couldn’t find her voice.

  "It’s all right." The first figure lurched unsteadily toward her. Instead of walking it seemed to shudder from side to side like a shorter creature toddling on stilts. Long, thin arms reached for her, the fingers rippling bonelessly. "We can take you to him."

  Other shapes were materializing behind the first two. Alicia suddenly realized they were grotesque, distorted parodies of the motel manager and his wife. Only then was she finally able to scream.

  "Burnfingers!"

  The stringy fingers were grasping at her, pulling at her arms and robe, tugging her close. "No!" She tried to push them off, keep them away. "Go away, whatever you are, go away and leave me alone!"

  Then Burnfingers was there, appearing like a wraith in their midst. He picked up the smaller of the first two things and threw it twenty feet into the night. Its companion growled and wrapped its arms around Alicia while two others jumped the intruder. Burnfingers ripped the first in half, cleanly, since there was no blood. The other climbed up his back, trying to get at his neck. The Indian leaped into the air, twisted, and landed on his back, crushing his assailant between his bulk and the pavement.

  "Get inside!" he yelled at Alicia. "Get inside and lock the door!"

  She fought against the monstrosity that held her tight, flailing at the thin body and trying to ignore the awful putrid smell that arose from it, the kind of smell she’d once encountered when she’d left some unwrapped chicken in the pantry for a week. The smell of death and rotten things.

  Burnfingers was coming for her when a new shape silently emerged from the darkness behind him. The man-thing held a section of steel pipe in one hand. It made a sickening dull sound as it contacted the back of Burnfingers Begay’s skull. The Indian staggered and turned, only to catch the pipe across his forehead. His eyes rolled up and he toppled forward.

  "No, no!" Alicia kept screaming despite the attempts of the creature holding her to muffle her voice with one jerky hand. The fingers stank of decay.

  Burnfingers lay unmoving on the pavement, blood forming an expanding pool around his head. Fighting down her nausea, Alicia tried to bite the hand that was gagging her. Her teeth went halfway through the rubbery flesh. The thing turned to other motionless shapes hovering nearby and croaked a command, ignoring the wound.

  "Get — the — others."

  Alicia redoubled her efforts, to no avail. Her teeth were stuck in the hand that muffled her screams. Despite the fact that she outweighed her captor, she couldn’t break free. It was like being entangled in a spool of runaway bailing wire.

  Frank halted, staring in the direction of the motel. "Did you hear that? It sounded like Alicia."

  "I did hear it, yes, and I think it was your wife. Her voice was full of fear."

  "Christ." He started running, somehow avoiding the trees that loomed up to block his path, trying to pace himself and not wanting to. Mouse kept up with him, her dress billowing around her slim form like a tormented cloud.

  The motel was still there. It hadn’t fallen off the edge of the world. They hurried around the side and up the path where not so very long ago he’d gone searching for a song. Once he slipped, felt something complain in his left knee, but regained his footing. By the time they reached the double room he was breathing hard.

  The door stood ajar. He flipped the light switch, blinking back the artificial brightness. "Alicia? Damn! Alicia!" She wasn’t in the bathroom, nor in the next room with the children. Wendy and Steven were also gone. There was no sign of a struggle.

  "Burnfingers. I never should’ve trusted him. He said he was crazy. I should’ve taken him at his word and dumped him back on the highway."

  "I am not sure it was…" But Frank was racing past her, pounding toward the motor home.

  A light appeared in the motel office as a door opened. The manager stood silhouetted by the glow from within, squinting into the night. "Hey! What’s going on out there? What’s all that yelling about?"

  "Call the police!" Frank shouted at him, not caring what line of reality they were on.

  "Police? What d’ya want with the police?"

  He was around the back of the motor home then, nearly tripping over a large shape lying on the pavement. His thoughts, which had been settling into a nice, comfortable, vengeful mode, were abruptly busted to hell and gone all over again when he saw what lay at his feet. He stood there, staring. Mouse joined him a moment later.

  "Jesus." Considering the amount of blood, he was lucky he hadn’t slipped. Bending over, he lifted one big arm, let it drop limply back to the ground. With Mouse helping him they were able to roll Begay over onto his back.

  "I think he’s dead."

  Mouse put an ear to Burnfingers’s chest, then wet two fingers and passed them across his lips. "Dead he is."

  "But if not him, then who …?"

  She rose. "Servants of the Anarchis. The forces of Evil. Had we been here they would have taken us, as well."

  "I don’t give a shit about that. If I’d been here maybe they wouldn’t have taken anybody."

  "You are a truly brave man, Frank, but you are not a fighter. If Burnfingers Begay could not prevail against them — do not berate yourself."

  The elderly figure of the motel manager joined them. He was puffing hard, his robe hanging loose across his bony shoulders. "Holy Bejesus! What happened here? That guy looks dead."

  Frank started to reply, until Mouse’s stare induced him to swallow his words. "Could be."

  "I’m going for the cops."

  "Yeah, you do that." He waited until the old man was out of earshot, looked across at Mouse. "I’m going after them."

  "It may be just what they want."

  "You don’t have to go."

  She shook her head. "We are bound together in the rest of this, Frank. Wherever we go, we must go together."

  "Then I guess you’re coming with me, cause I ain’t goin anywhere without my wife and kids."

  She sighed. "I know that. I will accompany you."

  "Lucky me." He started across the pavement. "I’m gonna throw on some clothes, get my wallet and keys. Keep an eye on the bus until I get back."

  "Hurry, Frank Sonderberg."

  "Don’t worry." He broke into a jog.

  She followed him with her eyes until he vanished i
nto the motel room. Then her gaze dropped to the motionless form at her feet. Poor, crazed Burnfingers Begay. Was he really as mad as he’d claimed? Or was he normal and the rest of the universe slightly unbalanced? She’d met Wanderers before, but never one who’d ranged quite so far or contentedly as he. That huge body had been home to an equally massive spirit. Had it fled, or did it linger still? Burnfingers was a stubborn man.

  She knelt and leaned forward until her lips were only a few inches from Burnfingers’s ear, and began to sing in a tremulous whisper. Across the street, the Doberman patrolling the back lot of a hardware store began to howl. He was not an animal easily spooked, but now he railed at the moon until his throat threatened to crack.

  His cry was picked up by every dog in town, from poodles to stray mutts to the coyotes fighting over garbage they’d dragged up to their ravines, a mournful canine chorus accompanying the extraordinary sweet sound Mouse poured into a dead man’s head. Its rhythm was subtle and serene, familiar yet unique.

  A moment passed; two. The rhythm was echoed by the sudden movement of Burnfingers Begay’s chest, then by a twitching of one hand, and at last by the opening of both eyes as he slowly sat erect. Letting out a long wheeze, he put both hands to his temples and rubbed hard. She sat down on the bottom step of the motor home and regarded him silently, the wind playing with the silken edges of her dress.

  "Thank you."

  "It was not all me," she explained. "There had to be something left to hear me. It works but rarely. You claim to have no soul. You are lying."

  He sounded embarrassed. "I didn’t say I never had one. I just said I didn’t have one at the time. It floats around, like excess baggage." He struggled to his feet, feeling the back of his head. "A mule kicked me. What were they?" He described his attackers as best he could.

  "Some local evil, or perhaps from a nearby reality line. They tried to fool you by imitating humanity, at which Evil is always poor. They came looking for a way to divert me from my course. It was only luck that enabled me to escape, but they may have achieved their purpose anyway. They took Frank Sonderberg’s wife and children, didn’t they?"