Steven leaned forward, hesitated a moment, then exhaled sharply. The flame vanished. Where it had danced was no darkening of the skin, no scorch mark.
“It’s a trick.”
Burnfingers smiled. “Didn’t I say so? Most of life is a trick, Steven. Physics is a trick, and chemistry a trick, and mathematics the neatest trick of them all. Now you try it.”
“Okay,” the boy said dubiously. He concentrated hard on his thumb as he snapped his fingers together. They popped cleanly, but several attempts produced only sore fingers and no flame.
“You do right with your fingers but not with your head. That’s where the trick part is.” He leaned close and whispered in the boy’s ear. Steven listened intently, nodding as he did so. “Now try again.”
Steven did so, repeatedly. The fourth attempt brought forth a tiny but unmistakable puff of smoke. “Gee!” Steven started to smile, staring at his hand in wonder.
“You see?” Burnfingers sat back, satisfied. “Like most tricks it is just a question of practice and getting your head straight. Concentrate now.”
Steven leaned forward eagerly, trying to set his mind the way the Navajo had instructed him. As he concentrated, he relaxed, and as he relaxed, the fear and terror of the past hours faded from his memory.
Which was what Burnfingers had intended all along.
8
FRANK DROVE EASILY. Alicia had swiveled her chair around in order to talk with Wendy, who kneeled on the floor next to her mother.
“He was so good-looking I didn’t see his eyes,” she was saying. “Or maybe I did and I just ignored what was there.”
Alicia stroked her daughter’s hair. “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter now.”
Mouse stood nearby, staring out the windshield. “Do not berate yourself, child. It is difficult much of the time to tell devils from men. Most devils have a little man in them, and most men a little devil in them. What one has to learn is how to judge proportions.”
Alicia smiled tolerantly. “A very clever metaphor.”
“Oh, no, not at all,” said Mouse innocently. “It’s the literal truth.”
“I take it, then, you’ve had a lot of experience with men?” As soon as she said it Alicia was sorry. That wasn’t her style at all. It was one of the main reasons she hated attending the parties thrown by Frank’s business associates. The women who came had raised bitchiness to a high art, and she wanted no part of it.
She needn’t have worried. It affected Mouse not in the slightest. “As a matter of fact I do know quite a bit about men. I’ve known men who were intelligent and handsome, men who were witty, men who were evil, a few who were everything. I’ve also known some devils, and I say again there are times when it is hard to tell them apart.” She smiled warmly down at Wendy.
“Don’t think you are the first woman who has had trouble making the distinction. The only difference in your case was that the differences were more clear-cut than usual.”
“I can tell you’ve had a lot of experience,” Wendy replied, “but really, how old are you?”
“Four thousand two hundred and twelve.”
Alicia laughed: a short, sharp giggle that brought her hand quickly to her lips. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Laughing is good for you. Now especially.”
Alicia didn’t dispute that. It had been awhile since she’d laughed aloud. You had to appreciate the joke. Given the talents Mouse had already demonstrated, a figure of fifty or sixty might have been acceptable. After all, Lena Horne was in her sixties and didn’t she look wonderful? Four thousand, though, made the gag work.
“You don’t look a day over three thousand. What’s your secret? I’m having cellulite trouble already.”
“The secret,” Mouse told her somberly, “is to see time coming and to step around it. Laughing at it helps a great deal. Time is very sensitive, you know. It can cope with almost anything except laughter.” Vast violet eyes turned back to Wendy. “Remember that always, girl. When you see time coming at you, laugh at it and it will retreat. You see, it knows how absurd it really is.”
Wendy considered this, though it was impossible to tell if any of it stayed with her. “What happens if you don’t make it to this Spinner? Will the fabric of existence keep unraveling?”
Mouse nodded. “Completely. As you have seen, it has already begun, like a rope fraying at the edges. Right now we are on an intact thread, though it’s impossible to tell whether it is running true or twisting about another line entirely.”
“What happens if it all unravels?” Alicia asked her.
“Then the Anarchis will have final victory and order will dissolve into Chaos. Confusion will reign supreme forever, nothing will be certain or stable, and logic and reason will become naught but memories, themselves unsecured.”
“You mean the world will come to an end,” Wendy said.
“Not to an end: rather to a confusion. All the threads will break and intertwine and twist and contort about themselves.”
“I think I understand. Everything would stay the same only it would be different. You wouldn’t be able to be sure of anything. Like driving to Baker and ending up in Hades Junction instead.”
Mouse nodded. “Only it will be worse than that. Much worse. The little things will be as severely disrupted as the big things.”
Wendy nodded solemnly.
Burnfingers Begay had lumbered forward, ducking to clear the ceiling of the motor home. He gazed at the dash. The instruments were partly obscured by Frank’s body.
“How are we doing on gas, my friend?”
“If the stuff that old guy sold us is burnable at all, we’ll be okay. This dinosaur has double tanks. Should be able to steam right through to Vegas without stopping. The fridge is full. Poke around near the back, you might even find a beer.”
“I would appreciate that,” said Burnfingers gravely.
Alicia was staring past him. Her son sat on the convertible sofa. He was bending forward concentrating on his hands. “What were you telling Steven?”
Burnfingers glanced back at the boy, then forward again. “Nothing, really. Little tricks to keep him amused. Desert survival techniques. One or two amusements I have acquired in my traveling.”
“So you’ve been around?”
“Yes. He is a traveler.” Mouse was eyeing the big man appraisingly. “An experienced traveler.”
“I have spent my life trying not to be bored, Ballad-Eyes.”
“How old are you, Burnfingers?” Alicia asked.
“About forty-five. Why?”
“Nothing.” Alicia sounded disappointed. Perhaps she’d been hoping he would respond with another outrageous claim the way Mouse had. “That’s what I’d guessed.”
“Drat. I was hoping you would think I was thirty-five.” He touched a rough hand to his cheek. “Genetic wrinkles. White people think every Indian they see looks ‘dignified.’ We do not understand that.”
Wendy settled her legs under her. “If you’ve traveled, where have you been?”
“Everyplace, just about. I’ve fought alongside African rebels, worked rice paddies in a Communist commune in China, dived with great white sharks off Dangerous Reef in Australia. I’ve circumnavigated Greenland and found remnants of a civilization the archaeologists don’t know existed, buried deep beneath the ice, where their instruments haven’t reached. One of these days they are going to be surprised, boy. I’ve lived with the Inuit and their Siberian relations, gone swimming off the Ross Ice Shelf, and crossed the Rub’ al Khali in the dead of summer, when the Bedu insisted it couldn’t be done without frying your brains. Of course, being crazy, that did not worry me much.”
