She nodded. “Without me to guide and protect you I fear you will never reach your destination. Any destination.”
“Does it have a name?” Steven asked.
Mouse turned in surprise. “You’re a precocious little fellow, aren’t you? I suspected as much. Does what have a name?”
“This Chaos thing that’s after us.” To Steven it was all a game, albeit a serious one.
“We call the antisoul the Anarchis. Think of it that way if it pleases you.” She turned back to Steven’s parents. “The great danger is that it realizes it need only prevent me from reaching the Spinner. If it can do that by placing obstacles in our path, then the fabric of existence will continue to unravel by itself. It need but rest and wait as the Cosmos comes apart around it.”
“Like melting Jell-O,” said Wendy thoughtfully.
“And you’re the number-one Anarchis-fighter, huh?” Frank no longer made any attempt to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“Not Anarchis-fighter. Through thought every sentient being does battle with it every moment. It is not a question of defeating the Anarchis but of soothing, of modulating, of reregulating the Spinner.”
“You can sing. I’ll grant you that. Otherwise you don’t look so hot to me.”
“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.
5
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?
