To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  "We saw the road sign," Mouse pointed out. "The kidnappers had to have a destination."

  The interstate climbed a slight rise, arcing over the base of the glass mountain. Ahead lay what once was Salt Lake City.

  "Oh my God." Frank pulled over and stared.

  The rising sun illuminated a panorama of destruction and devastation seen only in disaster movies and the minds of distraught writers. Instead of a pale bluish-white, the Great Salt Lake was tinted an angry yellow-orange. High concentrations of salt could not account for the sulfurous stain that marred the quiet waters. It might have been a lake on Io.

  The city itself lay in ruins. Jagged stumps of tall buildings protruded like broken teeth from what had once been the center of town. A caved-in square marked the location of the great Mormon temple. Not a single structure remained intact. There were only echoes, shadows of what had once been thriving suburbs and commercial districts. Nothing moved on the roads leading in and out of the city. Whole blocks had been flattened, the ground scoured to the foundations as if by a giant abrasive. In places the earth itself had been ripped away in long gouges.

  Where it entered the city, the interstate was broken and shattered. He took the first crumbling off ramp. As they descended, the concrete broke from beneath the rear right tires, but their momentum carried them safely the rest of the way to the surface of a city street.

  It reminded Frank of the pictures he’d seen of Germany at the end of World War II. Only fragments of buildings still stood. The walls had been torn off apartment buildings, leaving the rooms exposed like broken honeycomb. Floors sagged like tired tongues. There was no smoke, no fire. Whatever calamity had struck the city was not of recent origin.

  It had to have been more than a fire. No conflagration would crack stone or pulverize concrete or twist steel beams like pipe cleaners.

  "This reality line is ill," Mouse declared. "Very sick."

  "I know what line this must be," said Burnfingers quietly. "This must be one where they dropped the Bomb. I suppose if you have an infinite number of reality lines, then every possible reality is borne out sooner or later."

  "No," Mouse insisted. "The number of lines is finite. There are only as many as the Spinner can control. That doesn’t mean I dispute your analysis of what has happened here."

  "If that’s the case, then there oughta be a big crater somewheres downtown." Frank didn’t realize how low his voice had dropped. "Couldn’t have been too big a bomb or there wouldn’t be this much standing."

  "Maybe an airburst, or several," Burnfingers suggested. "In that case there might not be any craters."

  Mouse was grim. "This is a line where Evil has taken control, where its servants would be likely to flee. A place where the Anarchis is already all but in command."

  They drove through a crumpled intersection. "I can’t believe it," Frank muttered. "I can’t believe people would be this stupid on any reality line."

  "The mind is the mirror of the Cosmos." Mouse pointed at the sky. "Out there Chaos wars unceasingly with Order and Reason. The same battle is refought every day in the mind of each thinking person. Logic does not always win out. There are lines where stupidity triumphs."

  "It really happened here." Frank swerved to avoid the beetlelike hulk of a burned-out automobile. "This isn’t a fake front, like on a movie set." He turned sharply on her. "Hey, this isn’t my reality, is it?"

  "When threads break and cross, nothing is certain — but it doesn’t feel like your line, Frank Sonderberg."

  "Thank Christ for small favors." He turned back to his driving, following Burnfingers’s impressions and Mouse’s hunches, trying to stick to those streets where the paving was relatively intact.

  They were traveling through the western part of the city. Not every building had been flattened. A few structures boasted flimsy new roofs. Most had not been touched, remained eviscerated hulks that gazed with vacant window-eyes at the empty streets.

  "How can we be sure we’re not driving off onto another reality line?"

  "We can’t," Mouse told him.

  "You know, you ain’t very reassuring sometimes."

  "I’m sorry. It’s not easy to predict how reality is going to behave under present circumstances."

  "Something moving." Burnfingers pointed forward.

  Tall, gangly figures were emerging from some of the ruins flanking the road. People, Frank thought. Or, rather, things that might once have been people. A few still resembled human beings. Most were shambling, stumbling nightmares plucked from some demented biologist’s fevered brain.

  Some of the mutants scuttled about on all fours. Others had no legs and traveled on their turned-under knuckles, like amputee apes. The faces were worst of all because expression is the last refuge of humanity. They’d been gathered up and dumped in a genetic Mixmaster, beaten and pounded and jumbled together only to be poured out still alive. Many wore clothing, though they saw nothing that was not ragged or torn.

  Neither attacking nor fleeing, they gathered to gape at the pristine, undamaged motor home. It must look like a figment from a dream to them, Frank knew. He wondered how long ago the cataclysm had taken place and how many, if any, of these poor creatures remembered it. Had they ever seen a functional piece of machinery, much less anything as elaborate as the motor home? Maybe in old books, if any had survived. If reading had survived.

  He found himself slowing, not wanting to hit any of them. "What now?" There were dozens of the troglodytes packing tight around the Winnebago. The numbers made him nervous even though he saw nothing more threatening than an occasional club.

  "Stop," Burnfingers ordered him.

  "Here?"

  "We must find out where your family has been taken. We cannot continue simply to follow our feelings. That means we should ask possible witnesses. What is wrong? Does their appearance make you nervous?"

  "Damn straight it does."

  "It shouldn’t." Burnfingers rose and moved to the side door. "I have spent nighttime at Piccadilly Circus in London. In the tube tunnels beneath the square dwell humans stranger than these."

  Frank turned to Mouse. "Do as he says, Frank."

  "Can’t you still sense which way they’ve gone?"

  "It is thin, very thin. Far better to have their presence here confirmed."

  "Have it your way. But I’m staying inside."

  He hit the brake. The instant the motor home halted, the crowd of pitiful humanoid shapes surged toward it.

  Frank kept his foot on the brake and the transmission in gear, ready to burst forward at the first hint of trouble. He heard the door open, heard Burnfingers Begay talking and something cackle a reply. It didn’t sound like English, or any other language Frank could recognize. That didn’t slow Burnfingers, who kept chatting steadily with the crowd.

  Those who hadn’t gathered by the open door surrounded the motor home. A dozen or more stood in front, running their fingers silently over the hood and headlights, caressing and marveling. A few tears dribbled from damaged eyes.

  There was nothing to be afraid of here, he decided. Only things that had once been men and women, creatures more deserving of pity than disgust. He wondered what had precipitated the dropping of the Big One on this reality line, prayed the people on his own line could avoid it. The Anarchis’s influence, Mouse had hinted. For the first time he began to really understand what was at stake in all this.

  Alicia and Steven and Wendy concerned him more than history. The sooner he got them back and away from this place, the better for their health and sanity. Already the children might have suffered serious psychological damage.

  The door closed with a click and Burnfingers rejoined them.

  "You were able to understand them?" Mouse asked him.

  "All language is a variant of some other. You just have to learn to listen close and pick out the significant parts." He bent to point through the windshield. "Your woman and children were taken that way. They were not hard for these people to spot. O
perative vehicles are as scarce here as clean drinking water. A mutant named Prake and his gang took them."

  "The Anarchis has allies everywhere," Mouse murmured grimly.

  "According to the locals, this Prake is one pretty tough sumbitch. When I told them we had to go after him, they tried to talk me out of it. Civilization may be dead here, but courtesy and humanity survive. There is hope yet for this line."

  "Which way?" was all Frank said.

  "Keep going north, then there’s an avenue that angles northwest. Funny how certain things never die. Like street names. Like the Appian Way." He gestured a second time. "Three quarters of a mile that way, then we turn up Grand. Go all the way to the end of it."

  "Got it." Frank moved his foot from brake to accelerator. The sorrowful crowd of mutant humanity parted to make way for him. They moaned and gesticulated, trying to dissuade their visitors from going. Our sheer normalcy must be a relief to them, he mused.

  Maybe the locals wouldn’t mess with this Prake, but he sure as hell intended to. "Did they actually see Alicia and the kids?"

  Burnfingers nodded. "Around here an ordinary human being would attract more attention than this vehicle. They saw them, all right."

  Grand Avenue was a mass of broken, twisted concrete. It took them most of the day to negotiate the tormented pavement. The sun was setting by the time they drew near the section of the city that was dominated by Prake and his followers.

  They’d also been slowed by a brief but violent attack by a roving band of unfriendly mutants. During the assault the motor home sustained one cracked window. Saving his precious ammunition, Burnfingers had climbed onto the roof and used Steven’s baseball bat to knock off the attackers one at a time.

  When it was over and Burnfingers had rejoined them, Frank asked Mouse why she hadn’t simply sung their assailants away.

  "Not everyone or everything responds in the same way to my singing," she explained. "People, even altered people, are not rat-things or demons."

  "Different approach for different folks." Burnfingers held a wet washcloth to a bruise over his left eye. The bloody bat lay near the side door. "Hey, don’t look at me like that. You’re not afraid of me, too, are you?"

  "I fear anything I cannot understand," Mouse replied, "because there is so little I do not. You are one of those incomprehensible encounters, Burnfingers Begay. You confuse me, therefore I am wary."

  "I confuse me, too." He leaned forward. "Whup! Better slow down, Frank."

  "Why? What’s the matter?"

  "You’ll see in a minute."

  He did. The cityscape remained unchanged but not the road. Directly ahead, it was submerged beneath a film of scum-laden liquid. No isolated puddle, the water extended between the buildings as far to north and west as they could see, forming a cinnabar mirror that threw back the light of the setting sun.

  "I was right," Burnfingers declared. "The lake has risen even more on this line than on ours. It has invaded the city. It may happen on our line, too, some day soon." He put his washcloth aside. "This is the old lake coming back to reclaim its territory. Lake Bonneville. After the last Ice Age it covered all of Utah, reached into Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Now it is growing again."

  Frank strained. "Looks pretty shallow here."

  "The whole lake is shallow. Our town friends told me that Prake has himself a makeshift fort out this way, on one of the few high pieces of ground. Used to be a city park, long ago. Now it is an island. That is where we will find your family."

  Frank pressed his face to the window. "Water doesn’t look more than a few inches deep here. Maybe we should try and drive all the way and run over a few of 'em."

  "The depth may change, and there could be submerged potholes full of water. If this part of the city has been underwater for very long, the pavement might have begun to disintegrate. If we get stuck we might never get unstuck. I do not want to be afoot in this land." Burnfingers looked to his right. "Lady singer, could you drive if you had to?"

  Mouse regarded shift lever and pedals distastefully. "I don’t like machines, but under the circumstances all of us have to do that which we do not enjoy."

  "Damn right," said Frank sharply. "I’ve done plenty for you. Now it’s your turn to help me, and if that means doing a little driving, you can damn well do it."

  She nodded, her reply even. "I guess I damn well can." Both Burnfingers and Frank grinned. "But if I am to drive, what will you be doing?"

  Frank’s grin subsided. "Yeah. What will we be doing?"

  "Having a swim, I think, if the water does not get too deep." Burnfingers gestured at the couch. "These mattresses should float long enough to take us where we want to go. You have a flashlight?"

  "Should be several. The outfit that we rented from said this tank was completely stocked."

  Burnfingers regarded the back of the motor home speculatively. "Let us see what else we can find that might prove useful."

  A hundred yards from the motor home the water was barely knee-deep. The two men advanced silently, lying on their bellies on the makeshift raft. Burnfingers had wrapped the three mattresses they’d removed from the master bed in black plastic garbage bags. The plastic provided extra buoyancy while rendering the raft invisible against the dark water.

  Frank kicked slowly and steadily, the way Burnfingers had instructed him, easing his feet gently into the water to minimize noise. Occasionally he would kick too hard or they’d coast above a shallow place and a foot would touch bottom.

  Hugging the submerged foundations of those structures still standing, they paddled their way toward the firelight that marked the location of Prake’s island. Before long even this limited cover was denied them as they left the last of the buildings behind. Few remained standing by the old shoreline.

  Though soaked to the skin, Frank found he wasn’t uncomfortable. The water was almost too warm. Nor was it as salty as he’d anticipated. The mineral content of the inland sea had been heavily diluted by its expansion.

  Secured to the raft between Burnfingers and himself was another plastic bag. It held a surprise his resourceful companion had prepared for Prake and his gang. Each man carried knives and a flashlight. In addition, Burnfingers had the holster of his pistol slung across his shoulders.

  Frank nodded in its direction, whispered, "You think that pistol can stop these guys, if they’re as big and bad as the locals say?"

  Burnfingers indicated the gun. "This pistol, my friend, is a four-fifty-four. It’s loaded with two hundred and forty grain hollow-jacket bullets and packs about a ton of firing power. That’s about twice what you’d get out of a forty-four magnum. It’ll put a hole through quarter-inch steel plate at twenty-five yards."

  Frank just nodded. "Then I guess it’ll stop 'em." He tapped the plastic bag that rocked between them. It made a hollow, ringing sound. "If we get out of this, the rental company’s not going to believe what we did with some of their stuff."

  "Tell them to send me the bill." Burnfingers’s attention was concentrated on the firelight ahead. They were close enough now to make out the outline of the island. "Look there, off to your left. And keep your voice down."

  Frank complied. When he saw what Burnfingers had pointed to he had to choke down his instinctive reaction to cry out.

  A large cage fashioned of scrap lumber and hammered metal strips squatted on the island’s west end. Firelight showed clearly the three figures seated within. Alicia was cradling someone in her arms. Probably Steven, but it could have been Wendy. Frank half expected to hear the discordant sounds of his daughter’s portable stereo, until he remembered that it had been traded away for room and board in a glitzy hotel on another reality line.

  As for the remainder of the island, what they could see of it by firelight against the night was childish ruination, technology become slum. Salvaged sheet metal wrapped crudely around weathered two-by-fours. Plastic paneling made a flimsy barrier against the wind. Of stone there was none.

  But the skel
etal remains of the original playground equipment remained, bolted to subterranean foundations. A thin wisp of steel had been a curling slide. Lumpish iron spaghetti once served as a jungle gym for children to climb. The small merry-go-round was a battered, wounded giant’s top.

  Firepits lined with scrap metal blazed in the darkness. Figures crossed regularly in front of the light, and Frank’s hackles rose at the sight of the inhuman silhouettes. His companion’s reaction, however, was only one of anger and anticipation.

  "Those are the bastards who killed me. They are going to be surprised."

  "I thought the idea was for them not to see us."

  Burnfingers’s excitement subsided somewhat. "Yes, that is so. Well, they would have been surprised. If not for your family I would go in swinging, so I suppose I should give thanks for circumstance saving me from myself. There is no word in Comanche for prudence." He nodded. "Let us try to work our way around to the left, behind the cage."

  There was a guard, as minimal as it was relaxed. Apparently they believed that isolation and reputation would be sufficient to discourage any possible attack, and with good reason. None of the cityfolk had willingly come close to the island. Despite this, the intruders were spotted — by a tired mutant convinced he saw nothing more threatening than a floating shapeless mass of flotsam.

  As they rounded the western end of the island, Burnfingers and Frank had to kick a little harder to advance against a light breeze. Fortunately the wind wasn’t any stronger, or it might have pushed them out onto the endless expanse of lake.

  Then they were bumping dry land. No trees and only a few forlorn, isolated bushes survived on this part of the island, where once laughing children had played hide-and-seek among lovingly tended landscaping. Frank was cold despite the warm brine on which they drifted. If his neighbors didn’t grow up, the same disaster could befall his own reality. Never in his life had he longed for anything the way he now longed for the familiar, friendly confines of his home and office.

  They could overhear the mutants talking, their broken English full of postapocalyptic slang. While he and Begay lay motionless, two of the guards turned and walked off, leaving only one of their number standing in front of the cage. He was five feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds.