To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  "That is not like you, Frank Sonderberg." Burnfingers put a big hand on the other man’s shoulder. "I have been in worse spots and it has always worked out for me."

  Frank was shaking his head. "How would you know if it worked out for you or not? You’re nuts, remember? Besides, how can you cope with a situation that changes from day to day, minute to minute? How do you cope with a new reality every time you turn around?"

  "You change with it."

  "Burnfingers, I ain’t like you. You’ve been some weird places and done some weird things. Me, I’m strictly middle-class straight and normal. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take it. I’m not the hero type. I knew that when I was growing up, I knew it when I was going through school, and I knew it when I was starting my business. I still know it. It’s just not in me, understand?"

  Burnfingers replied solemnly. "Sometimes, my friend, we are forced into situations we don’t like, that make us uncomfortable, that we think we haven’t a chance in hell of coping with. But people cope, Frank. They cope all the time. From what I have seen of you these past many days I believe you can cope, too. No more talk of dying in your hogan. This is not the day for it. If you do go down, we all go down together fighting, if it be against the Anarchis itself. People were not made so they could cower in their beds when there was work to be done."

  "You heard the man." Flucca headed for the front steps. "Let’s get the others out of there."

  "What about it?" Burnfingers jerked his head in Flucca’s direction. "He has half your size and twice your guts."

  Frank hesitated, took a step forward. Too late, he knew he was committed. But according to Mouse, he’d been committed since that morning when he’d stopped to pick her up. So why the hell was he beating himself to death worrying about the inevitable? When he took the second step, Burnfingers Begay smiled.

  "That’s better."

  Halfway to the front door the big hibiscus bush on the left wrapped leafless branches around Frank’s waist. He let out a yell as the branches pulled him toward a mass of leaves that concealed something wet, green, and threatening. What they needed was an ax or machete. Instead, they had to make do with Burnfingers’s butterfly knife. It sawed through the branches as the remaining landscaping began to rustle alarmingly around them. More mutations, more changes.

  "See, it’s hopeless," Frank muttered as he brushed himself off. "Pretty soon we’ll be fighting crabgrass and bugs."

  "Mankind’s always fought crabgrass and bugs," Flucca reminded him. "Let’s get inside."

  The rose bushes were the worst because of the thorns. By the time they reached the door all three of them were scratched and bleeding. Burnfingers flailed at the clutching vines while Frank and Flucca pounded on the door.

  "Wendy, Alicia, open up! It’s me!"

  The door was wrenched inward and he almost fell. Alicia caught him. She was crying.

  "Frank, Frank — I thought we’d never see you again."

  "Same here, sweetheart." He held her close, not wanting to let her go.

  Only Burnfingers’s size and weight allowed him to shut the door against the press of rose bush and hibiscus, which a degenerate reality had turned carnivorous.

  Wendy stood in the center of the hall, staring blankly toward the door. Her expression was as lifeless as was possible for a sixteen-year-old to muster. Frank tried to manage a smile.

  "How ya doin', kiddo?"

  She blinked, focused on him. "Daddy. What’s going to happen now, Daddy? I thought it was all over and it’s only gotten worse, it’s gotten worse."

  He moved to embrace her. She hardly had the strength left to hug him, having cried herself out earlier. Branches and vines beat a staccato tattoo on walls and roof as the vegetation went berserk all over the Peninsula. They weren’t strong enough to penetrate the walls.

  "Got anything in the way of large and sharp?" Burnfingers inquired, feeling it was time to interrupt the reunion. "An ax would be nice."

  Frank looked back at him, Alicia under one arm and his daughter beneath the other. "This isn’t exactly a mountain cabin. What would I be doing with an ax?"

  "Thought you might have a fireplace."

  "Two of 'em, but we have wood delivered in the wintertime. We don’t cut it ourselves." He remembered something else. "Hang on. There are garden shears in the garage. I mean, we have gardening service but we do keep a few tools and — "

  Burnfingers was gone already, racing for the garage. Alicia peered up at her husband. "If we have a minute or two, would you like some coffee, dear?"

  "God, I’d love some. If it runs normal and doesn’t bite."

  Mouse greeted him when he entered the kitchen. He waved or said something meaningless — he wasn’t sure. Everyone sat down at the dinette and stared at the green carnage taking place in their yard. The double-paned glass kept the rampaging plants away from them but not from each other.

  Decorative bushes ripped and tore at each other in eerie silence, the only noise the sound of breaking wood and leaves being shredded. Even the big elm by the back wall had gone mad, flailing away at its smaller neighbors until it found itself locked in a wrestling match with the eucalyptus nearby. Meanwhile, smaller branches and vines flailed wildly at the roof and walls of the house.

  The smell of fresh-brewed coffee was a physical presence in the kitchen, its taste wonderfully invigorating. A few things hadn’t changed. His family was still human, his house still a sanctuary in a world gone mad.

  Certainly Mouse’s presence helped. She was leaning against a counter, sipping tea.

  "It is getting out of hand. The condition is becoming chronic."

  "Now there’s a news bulletin," Frank muttered. The coffee was balm to his throat, his stomach, his soul. "The whole city’s gone."

  "Gone?" Wendy stared at him, eyes wide. "You mean, like, everything?"

  "Like everything, kiddo. The sea’s come up a hundred feet. Catalina’s not there anymore. First the people went nutso, then the machines, and now the land itself. It’s all underwater. You didn’t see any of it?" His gaze flicked to his wife, who shook her head negatively.

  "We haven’t been outside since Burnfingers and Niccolo went looking for you. They told us to stay in and keep the doors bolted."

  Frank grunted. "Sound advice."

  "What’s going to happen now, sweetheart?" She was playing at drinking her own coffee, but her hand was shaking so badly she had to set the mug down until the trembling subsided. "What’s going to happen to us?"

  "I dunno. Our reality’s shot regardless."

  "Perhaps not," Mouse said calmly.

  He stared sharply at her. "Don’t you of all people go trying to make me feel better. I’ve been through hell the last hour and I’m in no mood to be patronized. I know my own reality when I see it. This is my house. I was in my own office, among my own people, until it all turned into something out of a real bad horror movie. Whatever happens now, nothing can change that. Our world is gone."

  "Are you so absolutely sure this is your world, then? Your reality? There are millions of reality lines, Frank Sonderberg. The slightest of differences would be sufficient to distinguish yours from one very much like it."

  He put the coffee down. "So how do we know if this one is ours?"

  "Once the Spinner has been soothed and the fabric of reality made whole again you will return to your one true reality. Only then will you know if this line is yours — or another."

  "And if this one isn’t ours, where are the local equivalents of us?"

  "In Las Vegas, enjoying your vacation, I should imagine. Provided Las Vegas still exists on this line."

  "You mean, if this ain’t our reality and we hang around here long enough we might run into ourselves?"

  "Nothing is impossible when reality lines cross."

  "That’s enough!" Wendy rose from the table, screaming and clutching her head. "That’s enough, that’s enough, that’s enough! I can’t understand any more!"

&nbs
p; Frank rose to grab her, pull her close. She kept raving. What was he supposed to do, slap her until she quieted? That was what they did in the movies, but this wasn’t a movie. This was his daughter who’d suffered too much he was holding in his arms. He couldn’t hit her to help her.

  So he just rocked her gently and kept telling her everything was going to be all right and, as it developed, that was exactly what was required.

  A clattering sounded in the hallway and everyone turned sharply, but it was only Burnfingers Begay returning from his foray to the garage. His hands held the garden shears Frank had remembered seeing hanging on a wall hook. Also two small tree saws and a pair of hand clippers.

  "No chainsaw, but these will help. We should take all the big knives, too." He looked over their heads. "Where is Flucca?"

  Frank turned a circle. He didn’t remember when the dwarf had disappeared. His return coincided with Burnfingers’s own.

  "We’re all here, then." Burnfingers nodded to himself. "We will fight our way out together, as we have done since the beginning. I am glad I will be with white-eyes who have learned how to fight."

  "Fight? Our way out?" Alicia sounded despondent. "Frank, we’re not leaving again, are we? Not from here, not from our house."

  "It may not be our house," he told her grimly. "Burnfingers is right. We can’t stay here. We have to go on until there’s an end to all this, no matter who wins. And if this does turn out to be our reality, I don’t want to stay here anyway. Not with the whole damn city drowned. At this rate the rest of California’s going to go, too. Maybe the whole planet." He looked over at Mouse. "I wish to hell I’d never set eyes on you."

  "I’m sorry, Frank Sonderberg. Right now I’m the only reality you have left."

  "Yeah, I guessed." At that instant he understood everything better than at any moment since they’d left Barstow. Small comfort at best. "Let’s go."

  "No, Daddy." Wendy took a step away from him.

  "Honey, we have to. We’ve come too far to stop here. Don’t you see? We don’t have any choice in the matter. Probably haven’t had for some time. Besides," he finished quietly, "if we don’t go with Mouse I have this powerful feeling we’ll never have a chance of seeing your brother again."

  "What makes you think we have any chance anyway?" she replied bitterly.

  "Because I believe we do. I believe it because I have to."

  Mouse was smiling that thin, enigmatic smile he found so maddening. "I knew you were the right one when you stopped for me, Frank Sonderberg."

  He whirled to face her. "How about you shut up for a while?" His anger surprised him. Since he had the strength in him, he took the opportunity to rail at God, the fates, and whatever other agency might have played a part in the disintegration of his pleasant, contented life. What he really wanted to do was fight back, but in this war there was nothing to strike out against except the shapeless, ill-defined nemesis Mouse called the Anarchis.

  That didn’t prevent him from cursing the Cosmos, which he proceeded to do loudly and fluently. When he was finished he gave his wife a hand up from the table.

  "We’re stuck, sweetheart. We can’t go back and we can’t stay here, so we have to go on. So we might as well give it our best shot. Whaddaya say?"

  Her smile was full of love. "That’s how we’ve always lived, Frank. I guess I’m too set in my ways to change now even if I want to."

  "That’s my gal." He kissed her lightly, then turned to Burnfingers. "I think we’re ready."

  "I know it is so, my friend. Now, everyone grab something useful. Knives, cleavers, food, bottled water, juice — anything we might need."

  They loaded themselves down, filling pockets with food and medicine, arming themselves with makeshift weapons. Mouse carried more than her share, but she was so full of surprises Frank didn’t even blink at the size of the sack she slung over her shoulder.

  As they assembled supplies in the front hall, preparatory to making a dash for the motor home, Frank saw Burnfingers emerge from the garage carrying a double armful of unexpected devices. He nodded in their direction as the Indian began shoving them in an empty suitcase.

  "What are you gonna do with all that stuff?" The small propane torch made some sense: what they couldn’t cut or stab or shoot they might be able to burn. But the rest struck him as peculiarly useless.

  "You will see. At least, I hope you will have the chance to see."

  Frank considered, trying to look past the present moment at something else. "You know, we sell a lot of hobby stuff in our stores." He nodded at Burnfingers’s package. "Steven used that for a little while, then got bored. Funny it should be lying around. I wonder how much of what’s happened here lately is coincidence and how much of it something else. That Mouse — I get the feeling she can do a few tricks with the threads of reality herself."

  Everyone assembled in the front hall, loaded down with bags and suitcases. Flucca insisted on being first out the door. "If they aim for your heads, they’ll miss mine. Besides, I’m used to working with vegetables." Alicia’s biggest cleaver dangled from his right hand as he turned.

  Burnfingers stood ready to back him up as he flung the door wide and the little man dashed outside, weapon held high. He didn’t have to use it. The plants' blind fury had burned itself out.

  The front walkway was littered with debris. It looked like the aftermath of a hurricane. Branches and leaves were scattered everywhere, a fine carpet of brown-green, which was just beginning to decay. Only a few growths remained standing. All were broken and torn, ripped to pieces by their neighbors. A few of the smaller plants, which had been ignored in the greater carnage, reached weakly for the refugees, but their roots and leaves were too short to span the walkway pavement. Flucca and Frank cut them to bits anyway, glad of a chance to strike back at something.

  Taking the suitcases and heavy bags from the women, Burnfingers tossed them through the motor home’s open door, then helped them inside. A shadow the size of a 727 passed overhead, but when Frank tilted back his head and shaded his eyes he saw nothing. He wasn’t disappointed. Whatever it had been might be coming back, and he was relieved when it was his turn to enter.

  "Sure you feel well enough to drive?" Burnfingers asked him as Frank settled himself behind the wheel.

  "You kiddin'? I’m looking forward to it."

  They took their seats and he headed for the gate, not bothering to close it behind them as they barreled through. Whether this was or wasn’t their own reality, he doubted they’d be coming back.

  He slowed as they approached the first intersection. All the streets were carpeted with shredded vegetation. The remaining stripped growth stood motionless as the dead all around them, having spent their energy in that earlier hour of cannibalistic fury. Only a few of the taller trees that lined the streets jerked spasmodically. None reached for the motor home. Not another vehicle appeared as they sat idling behind the stop sign.

  "Which way?" He looked back over his shoulder.

  Mouse stood by a closet, eyes closed tight. Either she was thinking hard, or else inspecting something none of them could see. Then her eyes snapped open and she looked to her right.

  "That way?" Frank sounded dubious. "That way’s down. Nothing there anymore except ocean." Come to think of it, he reminded himself, there was nothing in any direction except ocean. He shrugged and pulled on the wheel, putting the motor home on the drive that wound like wire around the ragged edge of the Peninsula.

  Soon the ocean came into view. Catalina was still gone and there were more waterspouts and whirlpools than before. Immense brown-red shapes the size of small ships battled in the raging water. Behind them, the sun was setting. Even it was different: a swollen, unhealthy-looking yellow globe. Frank was sure he could make out individual solar prominences flaring hellishly from the edge of the bloated disk. Was it an optical illusion or had it really grown? Would it go nova on this reality line while they were still driving in circles? He fancied he could see dark sunsp
ots crawling across the nuclear surface, forced himself to turn back to the leaf-and branch-paved road.

  The coast drive descended sharply toward a small suburb called Hollywood Riviera. Redondo Beach was the first major community up the coast.

  Except Redondo Beach wasn’t there anymore. There was only the agitated green sea, which stretched as far north as the Hollywood Hills. A few taller structures still thrust their uppermost floors above the waves, now that the rate of subsidence seemed to have slowed. East and north, the towers of Wilshire Boulevard rose above the water like a line of violets. He applied the brake.

  "What now?"

  Mouse nodded calmly. "This is the right path. Continue."

  "But we can’t," Alicia pointed out. "The road goes under the water."

  The other woman smiled at her. "Reality is what you make of it. Keep going, Frank. I’ll tell you when to stop or turn."

  So this was it, he told himself tiredly. They could turn back to the empty house in the devastated neighborhood and wait for the ballooning sun to fry them, or he could listen to Mouse. Tiny, elfin-faced, beautiful, enigmatic, irresistible Mouse. She’d followed as often as she’d led, these past crazy days. Now she was telling him to do the impossible.

  But was it really so very much more radical than sticking one’s foot over the edge of the world, or driving blind on a highway that ran through ultimate void past a veil of stars? If there could be roads through nothing, why couldn’t there be roads through something? Water, for instance? Slowly his foot came off the brake.

  "Frank …?"

  He turned to his wife and smiled, surprised at his own indifference to what might happen next. "There’s nowhere else to go, sweetheart. Not here, not on this line. So we might as well go on."

  She looked at Mouse, who smiled reassuringly. Then she sat up straight in her seat, her hands gripping the armrests tightly. "Okay. I don’t know why, but okay."

  "There is only one other problem." Burnfingers was staring straight ahead as Frank started down the slope, the motor home picking up speed as it headed for the water.

  "What’s that?" Frank heard himself shout.