Алан Дин Фостер - To the Vanishing Point

"Who, me? You’ve gotta be kidding. None of us can…"

"Hey, Dad. Dad?"

Father and mother looked at Wendy. Frank readied himself to say something, and then he remembered. Back in the reality that had claimed his son, where each of them had demonstrated a special talent, a unique characteristic, only his daughter had simply sat and stared, displaying nothing. Now here…

"Are you sure, sugar?" He hadn’t called her that in quite a few years. It came back easily and felt good. "I mean, really sure?"

"I can try, Dad."

He nodded, smiled, and indicated the motor home. "Go and get it, then." Eyes shining, she turned and sprinted past Burnfingers Begay.

Frank turned to Mouse unable to vanquish the pride in his voice. "My little girl, when she puts her mind to it, can play the harmonica."

"I don’t know." Begay was doubtful. "It is not a noble instrument."

"The nobility lies in the performer, not the instrument," Mouse informed him. "We must try and hope."

Wendy rejoined them, panting hard. In one hand she held a shiny silver concert harmonica. Next to Burnfingers’s solid-gold flute it didn’t look like much, but Mouse didn’t appear disappointed. She came forward and put both hands on the girl’s shoulders.

"Just listen and try to follow. Let your thoughts flow and be one with the music."

Burnfingers raised the flute to his lips. "Now it is time to let your heart sing."

Wendy nodded. "I’m ready." She put the instrument to her lips.

It was not what Frank normally thought of as music, when he thought of it at all. The golden flute was akin to bubbles in champagne while his daughter’s harmonica sounded more like the foam atop beer. Somehow it all came together, carried forward by the power of Mouse’s song. And enveloping them and adding to it all was the almost palpable projection of maternal affection and warmth that emanated once more from Alicia.

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.