Алан Дин Фостер - To the Vanishing Point

"Not all is exactly as it appears to be, Frank Sonderberg. You too are more than you think you are."

"Never mind what I am," he said, embarrassed. "What matters is that, according to you, even if we drop you off somewhere we’re still stuck with fighting this whatever-it-is because we’re somehow sensitized to this battle from picking you up."

Mouse was genuinely contrite. "I am sorry for that, but if you had not helped me, the fabric of existence would continue its unraveling. I promise that would soon affect you and your entire world. But help me you have. Now I am on my way again to the Vanishing Point. Hope is born anew. All we must do is get there."

Frank was shaking his head. "You’re real big on this we business, aren’t you?"

"Drive me to the Vanishing Point and I will take care of everything. Once there, you need no longer be involved, nor will you be an object of interest to the forces of Evil any longer."

"That’s all we’ve got to do, huh? Where is this Vanishing Point, anyway? I take it, somewhere close to Vegas?"

"It moves around. At the moment, it is indeed in the vicinity of the place you call Las Vegas. Its motions are complex and difficult to predict."

"I’ll bet. And this Spinner, it’s at this Vanishing Point?"

"Yes." Mouse looked relieved. "Now you understand!"

"No, I do not understand. I don’t understand a damn thing. But I didn’t understand those rat-creatures that tried to get at us, either, and they were real enough." He glanced back. "You’re real enough. So even though I don’t understand, I guess at least part of what you’re talking about must be real, too.

"How do I know we can trust you? How do we know you’re not lying about all of this? It’d be easy just to kick you out, right here, and forget about you."

"Easy enough, until your whole world accelerated its descent into madness and destruction."

"Look, why should I have to take that kind of responsibility? I didn’t ask for it. I don’t want it!"

"Frank," said Alicia calmingly, "we’re going to Las Vegas anyway. Aren’t we?"

He slumped in the padded seat. "I used to think so."

It was still unnaturally dark outside. Nothing else materialized to assault the motor home. After a while the peculiar thin storm clouds began to break up and fade away.

"What happened to Baker?" he asked.

Mouse blinked. "What?"

"Baker," he repeated patiently. "We were supposed to have passed a little town called Baker."

"Then we probably did, only we are no longer on its line of existence. Your reality has already begun to fray."

He shook his head dubiously. "I can’t get used to this idea of reality coming to pieces like an old suit. What about Las Vegas? Are you saying it doesn’t exist for us any longer, either?"

"Oh, Frank." Alicia started to chide him. "Of course Las Vegas still exists!" Her expression dropped and she turned uncertainly to Mouse. "Doesn’t it?"

"I would think so. It is the small things that change first. They are more brittle. Small things. A few plants, an animal or two, the color of the sky, a small town sooner than a large one. Your road has not yet changed, has it?"

Frank had to admit that I-40 looked as monotonous as ever. The smooth concrete stretched out unbroken before them. The barbed-wire fence lining the limits of the state’s right-of-way held back the desert. The culverts they occasionally passed over were still fashioned of corrugated steel — though after detecting motion in one of them he found he no longer glanced in their direction.

"All right. We’ll take you in to Vegas, but no farther. No matter what’s happening to the fabric of existence. Got it?"

"I am grateful for your aid. Though you know it not, you are helping yourselves as you help me."

"Yeah, sure." Frank didn’t hide his displeasure as he hunched over the wheel.

The fabric of existence, unraveling like a ball of twine. Chaos yclept Anarchis. Sirens with lavender eyes who came from a civilization of eerie musicians and sang like whole choirs of electronic instruments. Armies of oversized rodents that fought with tiny knives and axes and gazed at you out of eyes wet with malevolent intelligence.

Somewhere between Barstow and Baker Frank had unknowingly taken an off ramp named Madness. But he couldn’t be going mad because his whole family was seeing the same things. It was all much too real. Certainly his fear was. His fear and frustration.

Why him? Why innocent, ordinary Frank Sonderberg? Hadn’t he worked his butt off all his life? Hadn’t he been a good father and husband, not hitting the kids any more than absolutely necessary, not cheating on his wife except maybe once? Wasn’t he understanding even of his daughter’s freako friends and his son’s alarming passion for junk food and candy? Why did the damnable fates have to go and pick on him and his family when all they wanted was a little safe, clean excitement and to sit by a pool for a few days? He knew he was nothing special. Why not pick on the president, or a general, or some brilliant scientist? Why the owner of a chain of sporting goods stores?

He knew why. It was all because He was the One who had Stopped. Him, Frank Sonderberg and kin. They were the ones who stopped for Mouse, thereby aligning themselves with her and her mission. According to her, if they hadn’t stopped and she’d been left standing rideless by the side of the highway much longer, the world would soon perish in a cataclysm of unraveling reason.

Had she maybe overstated the situation just a little to keep them from throwing her off? Might her theorized Armageddon not have come in his lifetime?

No use supposing, as he’d told his kids on more than one occasion. The fact of the matter was that they had picked her up. She was real, as were the gas station attendant with his hidden tail, and the syrupy bleeding vegetation they’d passed, and the rat army. So how could he dispute everything else she’d told them?

She’d given no guarantee she was any better than the other unnatural creatures they’d encountered. No guarantee at all, except — he’d seen the evil in those compact rat faces, had heard it in the old attendant’s chuckle. And she’d driven off the rat-things. That meant she could protect them from similar attackers. Perhaps there wouldn’t be any more attacks. Perhaps they’d drive straight through to Vegas, drop her off somewhere, wave good-bye, check into their hotel, and start pumping quarters into slots. The only narrow, pinched faces he wanted to see from this point on were those belonging to the habitual gamblers who packed tight around the craps table.

They’d take in Wayne Newton and maybe he’d even let Wendy persuade him to go see Tina Turner. When they were suitably relaxed and tanned they would take a limo to the airport and fly home. He’d completely lost his desire to explore this damnable, ominous desert. Fine with him if the next time he saw these blasted mountains it would be from thirty thousand feet.

"I don’t have time to save the world," he murmured to himself. "I’ve got a family to look after and a business to run."

He’d whispered it under his breath, but Mouse heard nonetheless. "That’s the trouble with you people. You don’t have any time for your world. You’ve time for your business and time for your religions. You’ve time for your families and time for your fun. But you don’t have time for the fish and the birds, for the land and the air. No time for the trees. No time for — "

"Spare me the eulogy," Frank said, interrupting her. "I said we’d get you to Vegas, and Frank Sonderberg’s not a guy who goes back on his word. Ask anybody in sporting goods west of the Mississippi. East, too, pretty soon. I’m thinking of expanding into Chicago."