To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  Alicia tried to reply but choked and could only nod.

  Frank put the motor home in gear, spoke without looking back over his shoulder. "Which way, chief?"

  "Straight ahead. First turn to the right," Burnfingers told him calmly.

  Hoping Alicia wasn’t watching, Frank leaned slightly forward and looked to his right as he pulled out onto the road. There was no sign of Steven or his patrimonial pisceans. Tricky little bastards, he thought furiously. They swim aboard, act curious and friendly, then make off with his kid.

  No, that wasn’t right, he told himself forcefully. Steven had left with them voluntarily. His friends, he’d called them, and seemed to mean it. He’d always enjoyed flying. Frank prayed fervently that wherever his son was and whatever he was doing at that moment, he was enjoying himself.

  It was very quiet inside the motor home. As they accelerated, the ominous thunderheads and querulous lightning shrank behind them. Mouse stood in back watching the clumsy, deadly Anarchis recede. It was tenacious but undisciplined. They could not go around it, but as long as the motor home functioned, they could outrun it. It only suspected their presence here, smelled their intentions. Like a blind killer, it would follow remorselessly, intent on stamping out the hope they represented. They had to continue to stay two steps ahead of it. One wrong step and they would all perish.

  Along with everything else, she knew.

  The Sonderbergs sat side by side, speaking little. They kept their attention on the road ahead, no longer interested in their constantly changing, surreal surroundings. They thought solely of their vanished son.

  He’d sounded so relaxed, so confident, Frank mused. Much more sure of himself than any ten-year-old had a right to be. In spite of Mouse’s and Burnfingers’s reassurances he still had to wonder if he’d ever see his boy again. He found himself regretting all the times he’d yelled at him, usually over little things, inconsequentialities. Now he’d lost him to a world of permanent inconsequentiality.

  The highway climbed a grassy knoll before splitting on the other side into a second tangle of curls and twists. Burnfingers Begay confidently pointed the way, remembering the view from his earlier near-cosmic vantage point. Frank drove on, through holes in mountains that weren’t solid, avoiding solid holes that drifted in the midst of insubstantial mountains. Climbing vertical lanes that passed between clouds and dived down into dark earth.

  They drove a corkscrew of a road, around and around, making half a dozen loops without falling from the summit of each before the highway straightened out. Mist began to close in around them. Frank switched on the motor home’s fog lights. They helped some, but the poor visibility forced him to slow. There’d been no sign of the Anarchis for several hours, but he had no intention of stopping and waiting for the soup to lift. Besides, there was no place to pull over. There was only the road and the fog.

  Long, thin shapes with multiple wings were dimly glimpsed rafting through the grayness. They had bright yellow bodies stiff as rulers and tiny, unmoving black eyes. They didn’t so much fly as paddle through the sky. Later they passed a pair of cow-sized creatures that resembled the deep-sea nightmares Frank had once seen in a National Geographic documentary: all mouths and guts. But they had no teeth. They were consuming the fog, taking huge gulps of the stuff. Wherever they bit, a perfect sphere of clarity appeared. They paralleled the motor home for ten minutes, eating lazily, before falling behind.

  The road commenced a gradual descent. It also narrowed, which forced Frank to shift into low and kiss the brakes repeatedly as they negotiated one tight turn after another. After a while he could smell the burning brake shoes, a sharp acrid odor which drifted up through the center console.

  "Better get to the bottom of this soon, or find a place to pull off," he grumbled. "We have to let the brakes cool down."

  "Maybe there?"

  Alicia pointed. The fog was rising. Trees materialized out of the mist surrounding them. They looked like normal evergreens. Their roots were planted firmly in the ground, not an inch or so above it. As the mist thinned further they could make out a sweeping panorama of high snow-covered peaks and deep tree-lined canyons. A noisy river rushed down the gorge that paralleled the road. The pavement beneath the motor home’s wheels had given way to dirt somewhere back in the fog, Frank didn’t recall when or where. Now it straightened and turned to two-lane blacktop.

  As he accelerated tentatively, another car whizzed past in the opposite lane. It held another family. Buick, Chevy, he couldn’t tell. They were all so interchangeable these days, and it went by fast. Not too fast for him to make out a mother, father, and a couple of kids in the back seat. It might have been the Sonderbergs, except all four were five years younger.

  It was followed in a couple of minutes by a battered pickup. Each bruise and paint scrape was a wound of reality. The fog had almost dissipated completely.

  "Which way?"

  Burnfingers’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed the intersection ahead. "I don’t know. I did not see this place. My concern was to find the right road, but I did not have time or vision to follow it to its end."

  "Turn right," Alicia said suddenly.

  Frank eyed her in surprise. "Don’t tell me you’ve developed some kind of special sensing ability."

  "N-no." She hesitated. "It’s just that right feels, well — right."

  When Burnfingers said nothing, Frank shrugged. "What the hell. I’ve taken everybody else’s advice."

  He made the turn, found himself back on concrete highway. In a little while they found themselves atop an overlook. The road continued on, descending to the vast basin ahead in a series of neat switchbacks. A large truck was grinding its way laboriously up the steep grade.

  Ahead lay a vast alkaline lake. A thin ribbon of white, the highway skirted the southern shore before disappearing between two volcanic slopes, like a bit of dental floss cutting between a pair of molars. Something was wrong, Frank told himself. Everything looked too right. His brain was still unwilling to trust his eyes.

  Alicia was equally contemplative, but Wendy was bouncing up and down by the time they pulled into the little town that clung to the highway beyond the lake. She read every sign and advertisement aloud, as though claims for fishing lures and ads for chicken dinners were declarations of conquest.

  It was so heartbreakingly ordinary it left Frank dazed. He walked through the dream in comparative silence, pumping gas from a real pump, downing fast food at a McDonald’s. The teen who took their orders marveled as they polished off three normal dinners apiece. The sole objection came from Flucca, who was disappointed they hadn’t been able to find a Taco Bell instead.

  "Don’t worry," Alicia told him as she finished her second Big Mac and drained the last of her vanilla shake. "I’ll introduce you to the right people once we’re back in L.A."

  "A dream," the dwarf mumbled around a mouthful of fries. "My own reality, the city of the holocaust, all a dream. Only this is real. I proclaim it so!"

  "We can all relax, then." Frank wasn’t too tired or relieved to be sarcastic. He tapped his fingernails on the Formica, inhaled the smell of salted potatoes and hot grease. "It’s real, all right. It’s hanging on too long for it to be anything else. We’re back. We made it back. Back to reality, our reality. Back to normalcy." He smiled at Alicia, then looked to his right. His smile faded. "Only you aren’t normal. Are you, Mouse? Or whatever your name is."

  She sipped daintily at her Coke. "What is normal?"

  "Why do you have to answer all my questions with another question? I hate that."

  "Steven’s not here," Alicia reminded him. "That’s not normal, either."

  "No. It’s not normal and it’s not right."

  "When I reach the Vanishing Point," Mouse told him, "everything will be made right again."

  "Meaning Steven’ll come back to us? You can promise that?"

  She just looked at him. It was not an answer.

  They learned they were in Lee Vining, a l
ittle tourist town that catered to fishers and hikers. It sat on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, not far from Yosemite National Park. A straight drive of six to eight hours would put them back in Los Angeles Back home.

  It meant driving through the desert again, a different part of the same Mojave they’d traversed when starting out, so long ago, on their interrupted journey to Las Vegas. They would pass uncomfortably close to Barstow, to the beginnings of bad memories and disconcerting images. No one paid any attention to them as they exited the restaurant and returned to the motor home.

  "What will you do when we reach Los Angeles?" Alicia spoke as she settled back into her seat.

  "Continue on my way, with or without you," Mouse replied. "We have shaken the Anarchis for a while. I feel confident."

  "When we picked you up you were going away from L.A.," Frank reminded her.

  "Sometimes to get where you are going you have to return to where you have been. Traveling a Moebius strip, you would call it. Not all roads take familiar turnings."

  "I don’t understand," said Alicia.

  "I barely understand myself. The way is difficult and complex. The Vanishing Point does not lie on a map, but rather beyond it." She put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. "Do not worry about your son. He’s all right. I’m sure of it."

  "I wish I could believe that. I wish I could believe you. I’d feel better if I knew what this obulating was."

  "Someday I think he’ll explain it himself."

  Only exhaustion prevented Frank from driving straight through. After what they’d been through, what they’d experienced, it was a joy to eat ordinary food, to use plain cash and receive change in kind, and to talk with people who looked back at you out of eyes that did not glow. Even Burnfingers Begay, who insisted he needed no sleep, confessed to being tired.

  So they spent the night in the town of Mohave, luxuriating in the sappy, reassuring programs and loud commercials on the TV in their room. Not even the rattle of the freight trains that rumbled down the tracks that paralleled the main street could prevent them from sleeping deeply and soundly. Nor could Frank’s unease at closing his eyes one more time in the desert.

  He awoke with a start, to what he thought was growling outside their door. It was only a couple of college students starting up their aged, reluctant sedan. He slipped out of bed and cracked the door of their room. The morning smelled of desert dampness, old boxcars, oil, and grease, and coffee. All was as it had been when they’d turned out the lights and gone to sleep, with the addition of sun. He felt almost human as he gently woke Alicia.

  He made himself linger over breakfast. Waffles and bacon, eggs and hashbrowns and toast. Burnfingers offered to pay for his own, but Frank grandly refused the proffered doubloon.

  It was evening when they finally entered Los Angeles. A bad time to be on the road, but Frank didn’t mind. There were only two kinds of traffic in Los Angeles anymore anyway: rush hour and not quite rush hour. He delighted in the sight of the overloaded eighteen-wheeler that crowded him from behind, cheered the Corvette that cut him off in the slow lane. The freeway at rush hour was an old friend newly revisited, harbinger of normalcy, a great rough pet sucking in the sharp odor of unleaded gas and exhaling huge gouts of smog. The lungs of the city breathed around him, and he knew he was home at last.

  All that was missing was a familiar, whiny, complaining face from the back of the motor home. Steven’s continued absence was proof that memory and imagination were not the same. Everything he remembered had happened. In his mind’s eye he saw his son happily paddling away into the sky accompanied by a school of oversized angelfish. Not the last image one expected to have of one’s youngest child.

  What had been so fascinating? What pull had been strong enough to draw him away from his family? The fish? Obulating — whatever that was? Steven’s farewell had been a confident one. "I’ll be okay!" he’d insisted. How could he be so certain? What ten-year-old knew anything of the future and its prospects? Frank wondered if he’d ever see the overweight little rug rat again.

  Of course, he reminded himself unsparingly, they could all four of them just as easily be dead. Or worse, if Mouse’s stories of the Anarchis were true. At least father, mother, and daughter were alive and together instead of chained forever in Hell, imprisoned by thugs in an otherworldly casino, or undergoing the torments nuclear-devastated mutants might devise.

  Not at all the thoughts to have while cruising down Artesia Boulevard on a bright, sunny summer morn.

  16

  It was midday when he left Sepulveda for the Peninsula road. How reassuring to see the Pacific once more, an endless expanse of steel-gray water stretching toward Asia. They cruised past the neighborhood shopping center, its tile roofs sweating in the sun. Malaga Cove was crowded with surfers. Then up into the Palos Verdes hills.

  The openers for the electric gate that guarded the driveway were in the family cars. Frank had to exit the motor home and activate the iron barrier with a key.

  "Quite a place you got here," Burnfingers observed approvingly as they drove toward the house.

  "Couple acres." Frank was unduly modest. "I do pretty good. Work for it."

  Flucca stood by a window. "This is what it looks like on my reality line. The architecture’s different. I wonder what other realities are like? Maybe there are gardens full of unicorns and griffins."

  "Or like the old days when antelope and deer roamed the hills, unrestrained by fences, uncounted by game wardens." Burnfingers bent to survey the well-tended grounds that formed a green California necklace around the single-story house. "Where men counted coup with clubs instead of H-bombs. Do you know, little singer, where you are now?"

  Mouse shook her head. "I’ve never been here before. It lies on a path I must take for the first time."

  It was a rambling ranch-style structure. Lawn, bushes, and flowerbeds had all been recently trimmed. That meant the gardeners had been here within the past couple of days. They had only cutworms and beetles to battle, he mused. Hibiscus and geranium bloomed profusely. Iceplant turned one steep hillside facing the ocean a bright pink. It was all soothing and relaxing. He discovered he was looking forward to getting back to work with messianic intensity.

  Sara wasn’t inside. The maid usually left after lunch. Alicia insisted on taking care of her home to the full extent of her abilities, hence they engaged only part-time help. It was just as well. Sara would have been surprised to see them back home so far ahead of schedule.

  Frank set the brake, then joined the others in front of the main entrance. Burnfingers was eyeing the still-open gate.

  "I expect I will be on my way now."

  "Nonsense! You come right inside and rest." Alicia took his arm. "You too, Mr. Flucca. I promised I’d call some people on your behalf and I’m going to do exactly that, just as soon as we’ve all settled down a little."

  "Just show me the kitchen." Flucca was rubbing his hands together in expectation. "It’s been so long since I’ve had a chance to cook with proper utensils I’m afraid I may have forgotten how. Leave dinner to me."

  Mouse was gathering her dress around her, tightening the silken folds. "And I must be on my way. My time is no less precious here than elsewhere."

  "You’ll make better time if you have a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning." Frank knew that tone. His wife would not be denied. "We’ll pay your plane fare if necessary."

  "You forget. I cannot travel by plane."

  "Oh? Do planes upset you?"

  "No." She smiled. "Something about me tends to upset planes. I must continue on the ground. Still, you are right. A meal and a shower would be refreshing and speed me on my way. I am more confident now. The Vanishing Point cannot be far. I have managed to turn time and place back upon themselves. I am near enough to sense the Spinner’s presence now. Its agitation increases, but if I am not challenged or delayed further I believe I’ll be in time to do the necessary work."

  "Then it’s sett
led." Alicia was pleased. "We have guests."

  Recently scrubbed and polished by Sara, the house smelled faintly of lemon oil and disinfectant. Wendy vanished into her room while Alicia and Flucca headed for the kitchen. Frank was giving Mouse and Burnfingers Begay a tour of the house when the tall man spotted the big swimming pool out back.

  "A swim and a bath." He sighed appreciatively. "Those are two things I badly need. You will have to excuse me from the rest of your tour."

  Frank had a moment of uncertainty over the "bath" part, then was deriding himself for his hesitation. If Burnfingers wanted to take a bath in the pool, or go swimming in the tub, or set fire to the furniture, he’d more than earned the right to do so.

  He did not expect, when he returned from changing into clean clothes, to see the Indian and Mouse floating side by side in the shallow end of the pool, completely naked. Wendy was still in her room while Alicia was helping Flucca make dinner. So there was no one to prevent Frank from standing in the hall and staring as Mouse emerged from the water. He half expected to see tiny wings attached to her shoulders, but her body was perfect. Not a blemish or wrinkle marred her sleek torso. In pretty good shape for someone thousands of years old, he told himself. He was unaware of the grin that had spread across his face.

  He watched motionless for a long time, drinking in the sight of her as she dried herself. Once he found himself wishing he was ten years younger. It took a moment to remember who and where he was, and what he was not. Then he headed for his office, a converted bedroom at the back of the house.

  It required him to pass his son’s room. The door was shut. Frank found himself slowing, forced himself to hurry past. Concentrating on making it back to Los Angeles had helped him to forget a little. Now that he was safely home, emotions forcibly shunted aside returned in a rush.