Алан Дин Фостер - To the Vanishing Point

"Look at this one." The little man held up a three-foot-long fish with minuscule fins. The body was barely an inch in diameter. Two feelers as long as the body itself protruded from the skull. It twitched once in Flucca’s grasp.

"We’ve been through a lot of madness, but this last has to be the ultimate. We all oughta be as dead as that eel thing. And this," Frank said as he tapped the metal side of the motor home, "should be scrap."

"Some things they still build well," was all Flucca could think of to say.

After circling the vehicle one last time to convince himself it was still intact, Frank and Flucca rejoined the others.

"Isn’t this a beautiful spot?" Alicia was surveying the little bay where they’d emerged from the sea, shading her gaze from a tropical sun. "Maybe when this is all over we can come back here."

"If it’s on our reality line, yeah." There was a harshness to his tone he hadn’t intended. He turned to Mouse. "You said we were real close. You’ve been spouting that line ever since we picked you up."

"Distance is a relative matter, Frank Sonderberg. North we must go a little ways farther yet."

"What happens when we get there?" Wendy asked her. "To this Vanishing Point, I mean."

"When we get there? When we get there, child, why then you will hear me sing."

"But we’ve already heard you sing."

Mouse shook her head slowly. "No. You haven’t heard me sing. Really sing. Not yet." She continued to stare northward. "But I think there is yet time for that. Yet time."

"Then let’s get moving." Frank turned toward the motor home.

"I know we have to find Steven," Alicia said to him, "but don’t you think you should rest a little?"

"We’ll rest when this is done. In our own reality, which we’re not sure this is yet." He trudged through the sand toward the only reality he’d known for days. Reluctantly, his family followed.

"Not home." Burnfingers Begay brushed sand from his pants and sleeves. "Hot enough, but the palm trees do not belong. Arizona has plenty of beach. Just no ocean."

Wendy laughed and Alicia smiled, but not Frank. His sense of humor was stuck on another reality line. He wouldn’t laugh again until his family was back together and Burnfingers Begay and Mouse and Niccolo Flucca and the Anarchis and Chaos had all been jammed back into the unimportant corner of his mind where they belonged.

The motor home balked when he started the engine. It jerked forward, hesitated, balked again. The exhaust pipe spat water and dead fish all over the pristine beach. Gritting his teeth, Frank kept trying it until the engine cleared. By the time they pulled into the northbound lane of the narrow road, it was running smoothly again.

The terrain was a patchwork: emerald outcrops of dense vegetation consisting of palms, ferns, and brilliant flowers alternating with barren fields of rough dark lava. As the road crossed a narrow spit that extended out into the ocean, they came into view of a towering active volcano. It reminded Frank too much of the first stop on their odyssey through alternate realities.

Mouse’s reaction was very different. "The place!" she declared excitedly. "The marker. The smoking harbinger. Very soon now, very soon." She was standing between his seat and Alicia’s, staring intently forward.

Soon they were driving along a thin strip of road with ocean on one side and sheer cliffs on the other. Rocks lying in the road kept Frank glancing nervously at the plant-choked wall of stone on their left. The road had been sliced from the sheer rock at great expense, yet no one seemed to use it. Since leaving the beach they hadn’t seen another vehicle, another sign of life.

"Wherever we’re going we’d better get there soon," he muttered. "I don’t know how it’s lasted this long, but we’ve about run out." He indicated the fuel gauge. The digital readout rested on empty. "We’re down to emergency gas, if there is any. Must be, because we’re still goin'."

"There! Turn there!"

It threw Frank for a moment because it was so rare that Mouse shouted. He hit the brakes harder than was necessary, then crept forward until they reached the turnoff she’d indicated.

The steep, narrow dirt track occupied a cleft in the rocks. Concealed as it was by thick ferns and other growths, it was all but invisible from the main road. He would have driven past it a hundred times without suspecting its presence. Reluctantly, he turned into the opening. It was barely wide enough to admit the motor home. Occasionally the metal sides scraped rock.

Tropical flora closed in around them. It was as if they were traveling down a long, green tunnel. At times the ferns packing the open space in search of scarce sunlight were so thick they completely blocked the windshield. Frank had to drive slowly and by feel, praying there were no sharp dips or unexpected bends or drop-offs ahead. Soon the road itself disappeared. They continued to advance up the streambed, which had cut the canyon. A trickle of water ran down the center, disappearing between their wheels and reemerging in their wake.

After half an hour of driving across terrain that the motor home had never been designed to handle, the tunnel opened onto a much wider but equally steep-sided canyon.

Walls of volcanic rock towered hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. In places they were nearly vertical. Everywhere was dense vegetation. It looked like films Frank had seen of New Guinea or the South Pacific, though there was no reason to believe they were anywhere in either vicinity, or even on the same reality line where such familiar places existed.

Mouse stood close by, nodding and murmuring incomprehensibly to herself. In the absence of further instruction he kept going.

The streambed filled up and became more like a road again, silt muting the bumps and bounces. The squeaking, complaining suspension gave every indication of failing utterly at any moment.

They topped a small rise in the middle of the canyon valley. Ahead, the by now awesome walls enclosing them on all sides came together. Almost. Where they nearly met, a thin sliver of sky showed clearly. Everything ended at that place. Or extended from it, Frank thought. The canyon, the vegetation, the little stream, even the sky and sunlight all angled toward that narrow passage.

Mouse sighed heavily. "There it is."

"There what is?" he asked tiredly.

Her smile was wider than ever. "The Vanishing Point."

Having come so far the hard way, they all sat and stared for a long time. Even the motor home seemed to idle easier.

"What happens when we get there?" Wendy finally asked, breaking the silence. "Do we vanish, too?"

Mouse brought herself back from some faraway place to smile at Wendy. "No. It is the insubstantials that disappear at that place. Space, time, reality: that’s what a vanishing point is all about. It’s where everything goes when it’s not here, a place all its own, at once a part of yet outside the real cosmos. It’s the focus of real and of time."

"What do we do when we get there?" Alicia wondered.

"It is where the Spinner lives, weaving the fabric of reality. Presently it lies uneasy, as does reality itself. By soothing it we shall regulate its spinning and thereby restore reason to the worlds around us. I will sing to it and it will be healed." She paused. "At least, that is what I hope will happen."

"Then we’d better hurry and get there." Frank resumed his cautious advance up the streambed.

Ever since they’d left the beach, strange muted sounds had been coming from the vicinity of the rear bedroom. Now they were joined by a sharp metallic odor. He had to speak without taking his gaze from their path, but he couldn’t restrain his curiosity any longer.