To the Vanishing Point

by Alan Dean Foster

  Frank looked on and listened, and much as he was amazed by it all he discovered he was feeling very left out.

  A tug at his arm made him look down. Flucca stood there. "Don’t let it get to you, mate. Me, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket." He winked. It shouldn’t have made Frank feel better, but it did. He straightened as he turned back to the improbable concert.

  The Spinner was reacting. Bursts of sun-sized lightning now ran not only along its back but through its entire body. Legs, which had been twisting and jerking against one another, gradually relaxed until they resumed weaving in unison. The alignment commenced near the head and spread slowly toward the unimaginably distant horizon. As he looked on, the gaps and rips in the silvery mats that formed the fabric of innumerable reality lines began to close up. The image that resulted was one of vast beauty and regimentation. Frank felt an overwhelming sense of peace and contentment.

  Mouse’s voice was the soothing strength, the cool sound of Burnfingers’s flute was her support, and Wendy — Wendy’s herky-jerky harmonica provided an odd sort of harmonic glue that bound the whole together. The resonance of reason, he thought, marveling that his own daughter could be a contributor to such an endeavor.

  So entranced was he by the performance and the effect it was having on the Spinner that he was unaware he was rocking back and forth in time to the music. Unaware, that is, until he felt Flucca tugging anxiously on his wrist.

  He’d been asleep while awake. Now he frowned down at the smaller man, who turned and pointed back toward the canyon.

  The narrow slit of light was no longer visible as a bright dividing line between the towering cliffs. Now only darkness lived there, intensifying as he stared. A rumbling began to sound in his ears, in his bones.

  The others noticed it as well. Mouse looked worriedly back over her shoulder even as she continued with her song. Frank didn’t have to ask the significance of the advancing darkness.

  Relentlessly pursuing across alternate realities, the Anarchis had finally caught up with them.

  "Will she finish the song in time?" he muttered aloud, trying to divide his attention among the trio, his wife, and the oncoming nightmare.

  "She has to," said Flucca. "As I understand it, if she’s interrupted before her therapy’s been completed, then all our efforts will have been for nothing. I don’t see how this Anarchis could do harm to anything the size of the Spinner, but it doesn’t have to. All it has to do is stop the healing process."

  Frank turned away from the singers to study the canyon that formed the outside tip of the Vanishing Point. Only the narrow confines prevented the Anarchis from advancing faster. It had to compact itself, squeeze down to fit through.

  "I guess we’ve got to stop it."

  Frank’s lower jaw dropped as he regarded Flucca. "We?" The dwarf was already racing for the motor home. Frank fought to catch up with him. "What are we supposed to do? Throw rocks at it?"

  "We have to try something. We have to buy as much time as we can."

  "Maybe we can reason with it."

  Flucca was shaking his head as he mounted the steps. "Can’t reason with an agent of Chaos. That’s a contradiction in terms."

  "The story of my life." He piled in behind the little man.

  Flucca scrambled into the passenger’s seat. This time it didn’t feel so good to be sitting behind the wheel, but Frank knew his friend was right. They had to try and slow their unreasoning nemesis, had to give Mouse as much time as possible to complete her work. He wondered if Alicia had seen him leave. The warmth she projected was as vital to the Spinner’s therapy as the music. Just as well if she didn’t notice his absence. But it would’ve been nice to have had a chance to say good-bye.

  "Maybe we can slow the damn thing down, or at least give it a bellyache," he growled as he started the engine. "If it doesn’t like reality, a few tons of Detroit iron oughta give it pause."

  The wondrous music of the trio continued to reach their ears through the motor home’s walls, raising their spirits as it soothed the Spinner. Frank swung the motor home around, raced the engine, and then slammed his foot on the accelerator. No dragster, the Winnebago picked up speed gradually, but in a couple of minutes it was thundering toward the canyon at a very respectable velocity and gaining more every second. Whatever it struck would know it had been hit.

  He wondered if they’d make contact inside the Vanishing Point or out in the real world, and if it would make a difference. His fingers tightened on the wheel. Probably wasn’t his world out there, anyway. In his world the Pacific hadn’t invaded the land and monsters didn’t run rampant in the streets of Los Angeles. Despite the gravity of the moment, he found he could still grin. Not south of Sunset Boulevard they didn’t, anyway.

  Flucca kept an eye out for possible obstacles, rocks or logs. There were none on the perfectly flat plateau. There was only grass and flowers, which sprang back with unnatural vigor in the wake of the motor home’s heavy tires.

  They could see the Anarchis squeezing through the Vanishing Point, like black toothpaste boiling out of its tube. It was driving a swirling cloud of terrified hummingbirds and little people before it. As they neared the roiling mass, Frank was able to identify individual shapes held tightly within. There were the devils and demons from Hades Junction, off to the side the shifting hulks of the alien thugs who’d tried to steal Burnfingers Begay’s precious gold at Pass Regulus, and behind them the armed and raging mutants from the fringes of a nuked Salt Lake City. Mixed in and among these more familiar evils were the killers and gargoyles, which had frolicked amid an inundated Los Angeles.

  It rolled toward them, expanding as it emerged from the canyon. Bulging eyes and barbed tongues flared from its surface, as unstable and everchanging as the Chaos that was its master.

  "I’m only sorry you never got the chance to taste my cooking," Flucca murmured solemnly.

  "Yeah, me too." Frank closed his eyes. Good-bye, Alicia. Good-bye, Wendy. Good-bye, Steven, wherever you are.

  Plowing into the center of the writhing black storm, the motor home scattered teeth and eyeballs, mutants and devils in every direction. Frank’s eyes opened involuntarily, to reveal that they were driving through a substance like thin tar. Then the Anarchis began to recover from the shock of being struck by so much relentless reality. Evil and darkness closed tight around them, thick as molasses. They could no longer hear Mouse’s exhilarating song.

  Sly tendrils of night began to ooze into the motor home, seeping through imperfect joints, working their way beneath the weather stripping that lined the windows. The bubble of reality that had held back tons of seawater was unable to halt the invasion.

  Frank wrenched at the wheel with one hand as he used the other to swat at the cloying darkness. Maybe they could swing clear and come around for another run. The darkness recoiled from his flailing hand like a live thing, insubstantial tentacles searching for just the right opening. Flucca fought the feral probes with a frying pan.

  The motor home rumbled clear of the cloud, evil trailing behind like a clinging black contrail. Swinging around, Frank saw between coughs that they’d slowed but not stopped its advance. Mouse and the others continued with their song as though oblivious to the danger crawling across the plateau toward them.

  "Hang on!" Frank yelled.

  For a second time they smashed into the storm front that was the Anarchis. This time it was ready for them. Penetration came faster, the tendrils reached for them without hesitation. Frank thought the smoke laughed, a hideous, unpleasant chuckle. Coils of it encircled his arms, then his wrists. Another that had slipped up through the heating elements contracted around the foot he kept resolutely jammed to the accelerator.

  He tried to bring the heavy vehicle around for a third attack, but he could feel himself losing control. Hands were firmly disengaged from the wheel as his foot was lifted from the gas pedal. Flucca made a dive for it, only to run headlong into a wall of dark, pulsing smoke.

  A thi
n tendril wrapped itself round his forehead and dipped down to arc up his left nostril. Frank coughed, tried to choke it out, knew instinctively that if it crept down inside it would fill his lungs and throat with unbreathable horror. He cut through it with the edge of one hand only to see it re-form instantly.

  The light inside the motor home was going out, together with the light that was his life. He hoped only that he and Flucca had bought the others enough time to complete the work.

  Drifting through the darkness came a dinner plate. It had eyes and stripes, though whether it was black with white stripes or black on white he couldn’t tell. Lack of oxygen was impairing his vision. As it drew near he added fins and tail to his final catalogue of proximate observations.

  "Impolite," it ventured coolly.

  "Quite," said a similar voice.

  The three angelfish floated in the center of the motor home. The Anarchis tried to swallow them as it had swallowed the motor home and all its contents. Each time a smoky tendril made contact with shining scales it recoiled as if in pain.

  Frank waited for the third fish to speak and complete the tripartite hallucination. It might have done so had it not been superseded by yet a fourth voice.

  "Hi, Dad."

  19

  An unfelt wind swept the strands of the Anarchis from the motor home’s interior, though blackness still enclosed them on all sides. Frank hastily grabbed the wheel and hit the brake. Not even an impossible rescue could save them if he drove over the edge of the plateau. Claws and rasping tongues scratched at the windshield in frustrated fury. Only a few isolated puffs of darkness remained inside the motor home, and the angelfish were methodically herding them outside. Frank gaped at the tall young man standing behind him.

  "Steven?"

  The unanticipated visitor smiled. Only then did Frank recognize his son.

  "Sorry I took so long to get here, Dad, but it was a long way and I wanted to be sure I could do something when I got back."

  Instead of the overweight, slightly porcine ten-year-old raised on a steady diet of junk food and junk television, the Steven leaning against the back of Flucca’s chair stood six-three and weighed a compact two twenty. He’d aged along with his inexplicable growth. Frank would have guessed him to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

  He was clad in a sheepskin vest with the fleece facing outward, over a red and blue pearl-buttoned Western shirt. Below were jeans, snakeskin belt, and leather chaps beneath which boots flashed. Boots and shirt tabs were capped with gold. His Western hat was dusty brown encircled by a second reptilian band. Ivory-handled Colts rested in holsters slung from his belt, along with a shining lariat fashioned of something other than hemp. Always the would-be cowboy, Frank mused.

  "I’ve heard about kids who grew up too fast," Flucca commented, "but this is ridiculous."

  Steven smiled at him. Gone along with the fat was any suggestion of hesitation or uncertainty. He’d been transformed emotionally as well as physically.

  "Nothing’s ridiculous about obulating."

  "What the hell is that, anyway?" his father demanded to know.

  Steven pushed his hat back on his forehead. "It’s kinda hard to describe. You might think of it as experience attained through travel. It’s like reading a book only you’re in it for real. Helps you mature in a hurry."

  "No kiddin'."

  "I’ve been through a lot of realities, Dad. It was a help to have guides." He indicated the three hovering angelfish. "On the other hand, I’m afraid I’m overqualified for Little League now." He gazed out the front window. "Looks like the crisis has come. All reality’s at stake. I’ve learned a lot about reality and unreality. I figure I’ve acquired enough experience to be of some help."

  "Someone sings," said one of the angelfish, "and sings beautifully."

  "It will restore the Spinner’s rhythm," said one of the orange fish, "but only if she is given time to finish. We must restrain the Anarchis a little longer."

  "That’s what we’ve been trying to do." Frank kept a wary eye on the angry darkness beyond the glass as he spoke. "It’s like trying to fight smoke."

  "You have done well," the other orange fish told him. "Steel is good for weakening Chaos. Aluminum is better still. Now we can help, too." It was drifting less than a foot from Frank’s face now, regarding him from the bottom of flat black eyes. Disconcerted, Frank looked past it toward his son.

  "What can I do?"

  "Drive on," said one of the other fish.

  Despite his fears Frank was more than happy to follow instructions for a change. For a second time the motor home burst clear of the Anarchis. As soon as they emerged he saw they were more than halfway across the plateau. Dark tendrils the size of trees were reaching for the three musicians performing perilously near the edge. Alicia’s self-confidence might hold it back for a moment or two, but no longer. Then they would find themselves enveloped, together with reality’s last hope.

  Frank drove a little nearer oblivion than he would have preferred, but they needed the additional room. Already the Anarchis reached skyward, obscuring the cliffs from view and expanding to cover the entire plateau. As it advanced, the little yellow flowers closed up and grass wilted. The cloud of desperate hummingbirds and riders were forced into a steadily shrinking portion of plateau.

  The door slammed. A moment later Steven appeared in front of the motor home. He climbed up on the front bumper and unlimbered the shining lariat.

  Frank stared as his son whirled the rope over his head. It grew and grew until a sound like that of an approaching freight train filled the Winnebago. With a quite credible yee-haw! Steven let the immense loop fly at the oncoming wall of darkness. It settled neatly around the entire gigantic bulk.

  As he began pulling it tight, the Anarchis let loose with a roar powerful enough to make worlds tremble. Steven began whistling, drawing in the loop like a deep-sea fisherman fighting a record marlin. He didn’t stop until the Anarchis had been compacted by the lariat, reduced to a cylinder of pure Chaos barely a couple of yards in diameter. It was as black and shiny as polished obsidian and it fought with a relentless, wild strength.

  Steven used one hand to grip the radio aerial, wrapped the lariat twice around his wrist. "Let’s go, Dad!"

  "Yes. Time to go," the angelfish chorused.

  "Go? Go where?"

  "Back the way you came." Another fish gestured with a fin. "Back to reality, which the Anarchis cannot stand. Back through the Vanishing Point."

  Frank eased down the accelerator. "It’ll break free. He can’t hold it." His son stood on the bumper, clinging to rope and aerial as the motor home started forward. "It’s just one little rope."

  "Little rope?" said an orange angelfish. "Don’t underestimate your son or his tools. His rope is a superstring."

  "What the hell’s a superstring?"

  "I forget how primitive is your reality line," said one of the other fish. "A superstring is little more than an atom wide, but it’s billions of light-years long. The gravitational strength it exerts is beyond your comprehension. All superstrings were formed during and are left over from the creation of the Cosmos. They’re very useful for tying things together. Some are even stronger than the Spinner’s reality lines. It takes someone very special to make use of them."

  "Like you?" Flucca wondered.

  "We have neither hands nor inclination. Your son has always had both."

  "Cowboy," Frank murmured.

  "Expert obulator," the third fish corrected him. "He’s been a fine pupil."

  The Anarchis bellowed and thundered. It slammed into the canyon walls, sending rocks the size of skyscrapers flying. But it could not break the superstring. By this time Frank saw that the string itself was invisible. What they could see was the energy it radiated in the immediate visible spectrum. The silvery fluorescence he’d thought was the lariat itself was only its ghost.

  Gritting his teeth, adrenaline surging through his veins, he hung tight to the wheel as for the thir
d time the motor home slammed into the body of the Anarchis. He thought he saw it contort violently as it tried to strike at the individual holding the end of the lariat.

  The sunlight turned silver. At the same time, Mouse’s song, which had been overpowered by the bellowing of the Anarchis, swept over them in a great wave of sound. He flung up his arms to protect his eyes.

  The rear wheels rose from the ground first. Then the entire machine was blown forward as if by a tremendous gust of wind. At the last instant Frank saw the true eyes of the Anarchis, yellow like contaminated water. They flew at the very face of Chaos.

  A calmness filled him, the knowledge that he’d done the right thing. That Mouse had at last come to the end of her song. The cry of despair that rang in his head came not from the musicians or his strange companions or from his precariously positioned son but from the intensely evil thing wrapped around the front of the motor home.

  The cry and the music still echoed through his brain as he regained consciousness. The seatbelt held him upright in the driver’s seat. A concerned face gazed into his own.

  "Frank? Hey man, you all right?"

  He blinked at Flucca and tried to straighten. At the Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles there was a big taffy machine that ran round the clock; pushing and pulling, pushing and stretching. He felt like it had been working on his body. Only when he was reasonably confident he wouldn’t fall over in a dead heap did he permit himself to unsnap the seatbelt.

  "Pretty slick driving, Dad."

  It was Steven, looming larger than ever. The fancy cowboy outfit was gone, replaced by clean jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Easy for an obulator to change clothes, Frank mused. Could be that everything would be easy for Steven from now on. Anyone who could learn how to swap youth for age and fat for muscle could surely manage a quick change of attire.

  "Where are we, kiddo?"

  "Back where we belong, Dad. On our own reality line. That’s what Mouse says, anyway, and I’m inclined to agree with her."

  "Me, too." He looked up sharply. "The Spinner?"