To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  Burnfingers glanced reflexively at the motel, nodded.

  "I feared so. When he returns we will try to find them. He will not go on without them. I did not think he would."

  She didn’t ask if he was coming with them. She was correct in her assumptions, of course, but he would have appreciated the request nonetheless.

  "I did not know Evil could be subtle, but I ought to. Native Americans know more about subtle evils than most people — though whatever put me on the ground was anything but subtle."

  Frank rejoined them, slowing precipitously when he saw Burnfingers Begay standing in the moonlight caressing his neck. Frank’s shirt hung over his belt, the buttons were unfastened, and he’d forgotten to zip his fly. He glanced quickly at Mouse, then back at Burnfingers.

  "I thought you were dead."

  "Was," said the Indian ruefully. "Colder than Spider Rock. Do not look so shocked, Frank, friend. I have been dead before. It is different each time and always an educational experience, though on the whole I would have to say I prefer the alternative. Strange how darkness can be enlightening."

  "But how, who …?" His gaze drifted back to Mouse. Burnfingers nodded solemnly.

  "The little lady has some prickly tunes in her harmonic arsenal. I have been sung to sleep before, but never awake. I should not be so surprised. She is a special Mouse."

  Frank hesitated the briefest of instants before pushing past him. "I’m going after my family. Who’s coming with me?"

  "I must," said Mouse, "but I would help anyway."

  Frank paused in the doorway to look back at Burnfingers. "You?"

  "Of course I am coming, Frank. What can they do but kill me again?"

  "Yeah. Only maybe this time they’ll cut off your ears so you won’t be able to hear her songs." He headed for the driver’s seat, Mouse’s response ringing in his head.

  "You don’t need your ears to hear my songs, Frank. You don’t need even a tympanum." She sat down next to him. Burnfingers settled himself between the front seats.

  It should be Alicia sitting there, Frank told himself. Gentle, understanding Alicia, who was now being dragged God knew where by the hands of unmentionable things.

  Mouse brought him out of his sorrowful lethargy, her hand on his arm, the contact as electrifying as before. "Drive, Frank Sonderberg, and no matter where they have been taken, we will track your family."

  "Sure you know what you are getting into?" Burnfingers asked him.

  "No." He turned the key in the ignition, heard the engine respond. "I don’t." He nodded out into the not-quite-Utah night. "But that’s my wife and kids out there. Money, security, success — nothing means much without 'em. You wouldn’t understand. You aren’t married; you don’t have kids."

  "It is true I am not married, but I do have children. My sense of family is as strong as yours. Now shut up and drive."

  "Yeah. Right!" Frank almost wrenched the gear lever loose as he put the motor home in drive.

  He pulled out into the main drag, turned toward the interstate. As he did so, a blue and white police cruiser pulled into the parking lot behind them. Frank followed its progress in the rearview mirror.

  "Just drive," Mouse instructed him, sensing his uncertainty.

  "What if they could help?" His foot let up on the accelerator. The motor home slowed. "This reality line is almost identical to ours."

  "Where we are going they cannot follow, and if they did they would not long survive."

  "They would not follow, Frank," said Burnfingers, "but they will ask questions you do not want to have to try to answer. They will delay you with reports. They will kill your hopes with bureaucratese. Do not stop for them."

  Frank considered the advice of his friends. Resolutely, he turned his gaze away from the rearview and back to the road ahead.

  The officers who entered the motel lot didn’t quite know what to expect, but when they saw the pool of blood where Burnfingers Begay had lain, their early morning lethargy was swept aside by professional concern. The motel owner was standing nearby, staring up the road.

  "You the guy who called?"

  "Yes." The old man didn’t turn to look at the policeman. He was muttering to himself. "That fella was dead. I’m sure of it."

  The corporal pushed his cap back on his head. "What man? Who was dead?"

  "There was a man lying here and he was dead. His friends said he was dead. Then he got up and walked away."

  Suddenly leery of what he’d walked into at four in the morning, the cop walked around to where he could see the speaker’s face. "Then I guess he wasn’t dead after all, was he?"

  "No," said the manager slowly, "I guess he wasn’t." He looked down at his feet. "But there’s the blood."

  "Somebody’s blood." The corporal turned to his partner. "Guess we better check it out. Where are these people?"

  "Gone."

  "Gone? Whaddaya mean, gone?"

  "They left. With the dead man who wasn’t dead. In their motor home."

  The other officer spoke up. "Must be that big rig that was leaving as we were coming in."

  "Yes. Yes, that’s the one."

  The corporal turned back to his car in disgust. "Let’s go, Jake. Maybe the people in the motor home will make some sense."

  They pulled out into the road, burning rubber as they drove off in pursuit of the vehicle they’d passed on arrival. The motel owner was left alone in his quiet parking lot. After a while he looked back down at the rapidly drying pool of blood. Then he went to get a hose to wash it away.

  Frank saw the rotating red lights swing into sight in the rearview mirror. "Cops. What do I do now?"

  "Keep driving," said Burnfingers.

  "Keep driving," said Mouse. "We cannot waste time here, certainly not to answer questions."

  "That’s what I thought." He put his foot to the gas. "We won’t lose 'em on the interstate. They’ll catch up and pull us over."

  "It depends which on ramp we take," Burnfingers told him.

  "We must go the way your family has gone, and they have been taken to a different line. I sense it." Mouse had turned to observe the progress of the pursuing police cruiser. They weren’t going all out. Not yet.

  Beneath the hood the big engine rumbled. "They’re catching up already."

  "Relax, Frank." Burnfingers smiled confidently. "We will lose them."

  Frank nodded ahead. "There’s the on ramp. What do I do?"

  "Ignore it. Keep going straight, through the underpass."

  Frank sounded uncertain. "That’s just a country road." Burnfingers’s smile widened and that was enough to start Frank’s heart a-pounding. He clung to the wheel for support.

  The motor home shot beneath the freeway at sixty miles per hour. Now the police cruiser had its siren going as its occupants realized their quarry had no intention of pulling over voluntarily.

  "Junction coming up," said Burnfingers. Frank stared into the night.

  "What junction? I can’t see a damn thing!"

  He spoke too soon. It materialized out of the darkness, an unmarked fork in the road less than half a mile ahead.

  "Left," Mouse yelled, "and don’t slow down!"

  "Okay, okay!" Looking in the sideview mirror he could see one of the cops in the pursuit car leaning out and waving wildly, his gestures unmistakable. He wanted them to pull over and stop. What, he wondered, if they started shooting? He was no stunt driver and the motor home no sprint car.

  That’s when he saw the fence, the barrier that blocked the road. A pair of yellow warning lights flashed like cat’s eyes in the motor home’s high beams. No wonder the police were frantically driving to stop him.

  There was a roaring in his ears, like heavy surf banging a rocky shore. He hung on to the wheel, paralyzed. Mouse yelled at him again and it struck him that this was the first time he’d ever heard her raise her voice in anything other than song.

  "Keep going, Frank! Don’t stop now!"

  Behind him the police crui
ser swerved and twisted across the road, honking furiously, the two men inside doing everything possible to draw the attention of the motor home’s occupants as they wondered why it refused to pull over.

  Frank flinched but didn’t cover his eyes. The motor home smashed through the flimsy highway barrier, sending splinters and warning lights and planks flying in all directions. They vanished like feathers in the night. The pavement vanished, too, and they found themselves screaming down a dirt road. At the speed they were traveling, the motor home’s suspension was no match for rain ruts and potholes. Dishes flew out of cabinets to cartwheel wildly across the floor. Plastic glasses bounced and tumbled like debris from a New Year’s party. Burnfingers Begay hung on as best he could while Mouse sat stiffly in her seat, gripping the armrests with delicate fingers.

  "Where are we going?" Frank shouted. He heard a loud crack. Something breaking loose underneath, or were their pursuers finally shooting at them? The night-shrouded terrain was rushing by in a wash of head-beam light.

  "I’m not sure," Mouse told him, "but wherever it is, we have to get there."

  Another barrier appeared ahead, blocking the road. This one was smaller and had red warning lights flashing atop it instead of yellow. Beyond, the mountains and dusty landscape disappeared.

  "Keep going," said Burnfingers calmly.

  Frank stared at the barrier, his foot easing off the accelerator. "Keep going where? There’s no more road."

  Mouse leaned toward him, violet orbs flashing. "This is the way your family’s kidnappers have come. Do you want to find them or not? If we hesitate here we may lose them forever."

  His thoughts fought one another like a couple of tomcats in heat as the motor home continued to lose momentum. Behind him the wail of the siren lessened. Apparently the police were convinced he was finally going to pull over. After all, he had no other choice, did he? Frank turned to face her.

  "How can I trust you anymore, after what you’ve dragged us into?"

  She stared steadily back at him and her voice dropped to its usual breathy whisper. "How can you not trust me?"

  Frustrated, he turned to the motor home’s only other occupant. "Burnfingers?"

  The Indian shrugged. "The on ramps and off ramps we have to take on this journey don’t always come clearly marked, Frank. This looks promising to me."

  "And if it’s the wrong way?"

  "This world or another, what’s the difference?"

  Frank considered. "I guess the difference is that Alicia and the kids aren’t in this one anymore."

  He jammed the accelerator to the floor. The motor home roared forward, straight toward the barrier. This time he was positive he heard warning shots. As they struck the wood he closed his eyes.

  The ground ended as cleanly as if it had been cut away with an ax. Far below the cliff he could see trees, a small lake, the lights of another town. A great calmness came over him as the motor home lost velocity and started to tilt down. Behind him Burnfingers Begay yelled a war cry — or maybe it was a prayer.

  The police cruiser slowed, stopping well behind the ruined barrier that marked the end of the road. Its siren faded to silence, a dying beast encapsulated in a steel box. The red lights still pulsated atop the roof as the two policemen emerged to walk cautiously to the edge of the cliff. It wasn’t a very high cliff: maybe a hundred fifty feet above the plain below. But there still should have been a smoking, twisted chunk of wreckage at its foot. They looked hard and saw nothing but a few pine trees, scrub brush, and bare rock.

  A board that had been knocked loose from the road barrier finally fell from its persistent nail, making the older officer jump at the unexpected noise.

  "Get the spot," he growled to his partner.

  "But there’s — "

  "Just get it."

  The younger officer ran back to the car, returned with a six-inch-wide spotlight attached to a long cord. Flipping it on, he played the powerful beam over the rocks far below. It wasn’t really necessary. There was more than enough moonlight to see clearly by. Eventually he turned it off.

  "Nothing down there. Nothing."

  "That’s right. Nothing."

  "So where’d they go?"

  The corporal raised his gaze from the base of the cliff. "I don’t know where they went, but we’re not going to ask anybody else, are we?"

  "What about the report that old guy at the motel called in, about a dead man?"

  "Can’t have a dead man without a body." He glanced unwillingly back over the cliff. "Can’t have anyone without bodies. Maybe they’ll turn up somewhere else."

  "Like where?"

  "Find out where that thirty-foot motor home went and you’ll have your answer. Me, I’m going to try real hard not to lose any sleep over it." He pushed past the younger officer, who favored the cliff with a last uncertain look before hurrying to join the corporal in the car.

  He slid in, shut the door. "It wasn’t a hallucination or something, was it?"

  "I don’t know what it was. If it was an illusion, then the motel manager saw it, too. If we try real hard, maybe we can convince ourselves that’s what it was."

  The corporal turned the car around, headed back toward town. When they reached the place where the pavement started up again, the younger officer looked to his right. Pieces of wood and glass littered the side of the road.

  "Illusions don’t smash highway department barriers."

  The corporal kept his gaze resolutely forward. "Shut up," he said.

  12

  The motor home bounced once, hard, but the axles held. The jolt opened Frank’s eyes wide. No cliff, no dirt road, no angry, anxious police car fading into the distance behind them. They were back on the interstate once more, cruising steadily northward.

  Good thing he did open his eyes, because the pothole in the middle of the pavement that suddenly loomed in the headlights was big enough to swallow a Mercedes. Tires screeched in protest as he swerved around the crater. Then they were back on concrete.

  He had no choice but to slow down, the road was in such bad shape. The crater had cousins, some so large there was barely enough room to squeeze past. What remained of the pavement was cracked and eroded.

  Not potholes, he thought as they avoided another. Impact craters, the kind explosives would make. Though he let their speed fall to forty, the ride was still bumpy enough to jar the fillings out of your teeth.

  "I’ve heard of infrequent maintenance, but this is ridiculous." The landscape looked normal in the moonlight. High mountains off to the right, trees and bushes scattered behind the shoulder, and off to the left, in the distance, a vast sheet of water gleaming like aluminum foil. The Great Salt Lake.

  Some shortcut we took, he told himself. "Where are we now?"

  "On the right road to the Vanishing Point." Mouse had relaxed back in her chair.

  "I don’t give a shit about the Vanishing Point."

  "Gentle, Frank, gentle." She smiled at him. "This is the way your family came, too."

  Burnfingers was staring out the windshield. "I do not like this. It feels all wrong, and I am not talking about the condition of the road. Do you want me to drive for a while, Frank?"

  "No, thanks. I’ll be okay."

  They passed one road sign, but it was broken, knocked off its supporting posts as if by a high wind. Frank tried but couldn’t make out what it said.

  If anything, the road became worse as they neared the city’s outskirts. They saw no other vehicles, a fact, which might’ve been acceptable outside a town like Cedar City, but which was full of ominous portents for a metropolis the size of Salt Lake.

  "Ought to be some traffic." Frank scanned the road ahead. "Couple of trucks at least." He glanced to his right. "We’re on another reality line, right? Burnfingers’s on ramp didn’t just put us back on the same highway." Mouse just nodded. "Well, I don’t think I like this one as much as the last, even if the people hereabouts lie like normal."

  "It is not as bad as Hell."<
br />
  "That a fact? We don’t know that yet." He looked back over his shoulder. "Where’s the chief?"

  "In the back."

  Burnfingers rejoined them moments later, having altered his appearance. He’d exchanged his flannel shirt for one of black cotton and his red headband for another of equally dark material. White and red lines decorated his face.

  "War paint," he told Frank. "I had to improvise. I hope your woman will not mind my making use of her makeup kit. It was all I could find to work with."

  Frank nodded his approval. "Seems appropriate under the circumstances."

  "Mary Kay and Revlon." Burnfingers tried but was unable to repress a grin. "Not very traditional, but it will have to do."

  "Getting ready for war?" Mouse inquired.

  "I am always at war with something, little singer. This is serious business." Frank saw that Burnfingers had strapped on a holster that contained an enormous stainless-steel handgun. He was leaning on Steven’s baseball bat. Burnfingers noticed his stare. "Somebody whacked me pretty good. I want to be ready to whack him back. Newton’s Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Pretty smart dude, for a white man."

  Mouse pointed out an intact sign.

  SALT LAKE CITY — 20 Miles

  Frank was flipping through his maps as he dodged potholes. "What happened to Provo? We should be in Provo right now."

  There was no sign of the college town. The highway curved around the sloping mass of a vast hill. Only when the sun finally put in a reluctant appearance over the mountains did they see that the ground had been turned to slag, as if the whole mountain had been melted and then crystallized out anew. Transparent lava covered the ground to east and north. There wasn’t a tree or building to be seen.

  "Glass," Burnfingers murmured. "Something has turned this whole section of country to glass."

  An endless expanse of waveless water stretched from the edge of the highway to the western horizon. At least the Great Salt Lake hadn’t changed. Or had it? Burnfingers frowned at the lake.

  "I do not remember it being this big when I was here before. The lake has been rising for years, but not so fast as this. I wonder if the city is still here?"