His wife was filling sugar shakers. “See something new every day, doncha, honey? Listen, you folks ever come back this way, you be sure and stop in for coffee and danish or something, okay?”
“Sure,” Frank told her, “if we ever come back this way.”
Max was holding a ten up to the light. “Unbelievable. Such a feeble material for a unit of exchange.” He blinked, followed Frank and the others as they headed for the door. “Kinda hard to see through, though. I’m supposed to get new lenses in a week or so.”
Frank hesitated by the exit as his family filed outside. “I’m not sure I can handle those pumps. They look a little funny.”
“Oh, you’ll find one that fits,” Max assured him. “We monitor dispensing from in here. Just go ahead and fill ‘er up. And remember next time you’re back this way: the Conjunction never closes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Frank followed his family across the gravel, staring through the intersection at the starry void on the other side. As Max had promised, hidden among nozzles with peculiar shapes and openings was one that closely resembled a standard gasoline filler. As he lifted it from its support hook the word UNLEADED appeared in glowing letters on the metal of the pump housing. There was no visible meter: no digital readout, no rotating numbers. He shrugged, flicked open the filler cap cover, removed the cap, and shoved the nozzle in as far as it would go before pulling on the trigger. Gas began to flow. It stank like ordinary unleaded.
As he filled the tank he watched his family climb inside. Mouse and Burnfingers waited till last.
“Do you know this place?” he asked suddenly. “What’s this Conjunction, anyway?”
Mouse paused on the steps. “I imagine it’s just what they say it is. A conjunction.” She looked thoughtful. “A place where different strands of reality come together.” She smiled and followed Alicia inside. Burnfingers winked at him.
“Think of it that way, anyhow.”
“I’d rather not think of it at all.” The pump clicked off, indicating the tank was full, and Frank slipped the nozzle back onto its hook. As he was securing it he found himself looking back toward the café. The continuously changing sign over the entrance was a blur of icons and glyphs and letters.
He thought he saw a figure standing by one window. It was eight feet tall, completely covered in a glistening bronze fur, and wore a white apron. As he stared, it extended coppery cables from one arm to lift a sugar shaker off a table. The shaker turned into a tiny glass hydrant full of blue bubbles. Frank shook his head, looked again. When his eyes refocused they saw something like an anemic bear wearing a florid turquoise jumpsuit. It was clutching an armful of purple popsicles.
He could have looked again but decided it might be bad for his eyesight. Not to mention his sanity. Instead, he worked his way around to the front of the motor home and concentrated on checking the oil and coolant levels. It was with difficulty and determination that he kept himself from turning again toward the café.
Back inside, he slid down into the driver’s chair and distastefully studied the gravel lot. Beyond it lay half a dozen ephemeral roadways bordered on all sides by impossible emptiness.
“Which way?”
“Back onto the road we were traversing,” Mouse told him firmly. “That’s the way. That’s the path.”
“Seems to me I’ve heard that before.” With a sigh he started the engine and pulled out of the lot.
As they left the pumps behind, another vehicle pulled in behind them. It looked like a broken sequoia and went whisper-whisper as it settled to the ground beside the row of pumps. Out of it drifted eyes attached to a thin body and gossamer wings. It removed a black wire from a pump and stuck it into the tree trunk. The odor of rotten eggs and fried pineapple filled the air behind them.
Frank didn’t even breathe hard as they sailed off the sand onto the highway that stretched out into nothingness. At first he found it hard to concentrate on the road because he was constantly glancing at the rearview mirror. The Conjunction did not vanish abruptly, as if in a dream. Instead, it faded slowly like an ordinary roadside pullout, a bright beacon of light and friendship and consciousness. The last of it to disappear from view was the mysterious many-tongued illuminated sign, flashing its simple welcome to everyone and anyone, a cosmic lighthouse in the middle of the Great Abyss.
Sorry as he was to leave it behind, he felt better than he had in quite a while. The motor home’s tanks were full of honest gas and their bellies full of honest food. He wondered if he’d ever again enjoy so fine a meal served by such congenial hosts.
He drove for an hour, two, before the road ahead began to lighten. At Alicia’s shout everyone crowded forward.
They were leaving emptiness behind. Sky appeared and beneath it low hills covered with trees. Piles of dark volcanic rock formed gullies and arroyos on both sides of the road that shut out the void. They had arrived somewhere.
Not home, though. The rocks appeared normal enough but the trees were distorted parodies of healthy growths. Their branches twisted and curled in defiance of gravity, which was not so surprising since none of them were rooted in the earth. They floated just above the surface, their roots dangling in air. Nor were they fixed in place. Each moved with extreme slowness, propelled by the feathery waving of fine rootlets. Occasionally they bumped off each other like birds flying in slow motion.
As they stared, half a dozen fish came flying by. They were about a foot in diameter, black with silver stripes. As the motor home approached, they suddenly veered leftward, their fins and tails rippling as they vanished into the distance. Alicia’s eyes were wide and Frank clung grimly to the wheel. He had to because the roadway was rippling beneath them, having turned the consistency of taffy. Somehow the motor home clung to the surface, the wheels hanging on with deep tread instead of fingers. Or maybe the rubber had grown claws. Frank didn’t look because he was afraid of what he might see. And it was imperative they stay on the road. He firmly believed that if they wandered off the pavement, the motor home might start drifting like the incredible hovering fish, a steel bubble floating forever through an unstable reality.
Another school of larger fish swam lazily across the road in front of them. A family of little round heads atop bodiless legs scrambled into a protective gully. Frank thought he could hear them bleating as the motor home went past.
Whether benign or malevolent, at least every reality line they’d visited thus far had exhibited the familiar constants like air, gravity, and internal logic. It was the same in Pass Regulus as it had been in Hades or at the Conjunction. Now they found themselves on a line somewhere between reality and chaos, where the simplest laws of nature appeared to have been repealed.
“What kinda place is this?” Steven’s face was screwed into an expression of distaste and puzzlement.
“I am sure I don’t know.” Mouse was as intrigued as any of them.
“Maybe we’ll get through it quickly.” Alicia glanced hopefully at her husband, found no reassurance there. Unable to come up with any explanations for his own questions, he had none to spare for her.
They drove past a grove of upside-down trees. These balanced themselves on delicate branches, their roots hanging in the air like the hair of an old woman. They grew among rocky outcrops that drifted above grass, which in turn grew half an inch above the soil. A flock of raucous birds erupted from the ground beneath one tree, assembled briefly on its roots, then dove beak-first back into the earth.
“Too weird,” Wendy muttered.
The engine chose that moment to sputter and miss. The motor home shuddered. Then the electronic ignition refired and they lurched forward.
Frank found he was sweating. If the engine died here they might never get it going again. In a place like this, where natural law seemed to be on a permanent vacation, a familiar internal combustion device might decide to start putting out ice cubes instead of heat. The word for this reality line was subversive.
“I’ve never been anyplace like this,” Mouse was saying.
“I’ve never imagined anyplace like it.” He kept resolutely to the pavement.
A tapping at his window brought his head around sharply. Three large angelfish drifted just beyond the glass, keeping pace without visible effort. He checked the speedometer, which read sixty. The fish in front was black with yellow stripes, while its companions were orange and white. The leader was tapping on the glass with a fin. Frank hesitated, then cracked the window a few inches. The fish drifted up to the gap.
“Pardon me,” it said in perfect English, “but I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.” Its fins rippled smoothly as it swam alongside.
“We’re just passing through.” After all they’d experienced, it seemed almost normal to be conversing with a fish. If this variety fell in the water, he wondered, would it drown? “We’re on the right road, ain’t we?”
“You’re on the only road,” the fish assured him. Silver-dollar-sized eyes pressed curiously against the glass.
“Peculiar creatures,” opined one of the orange swimmers. “Strange habitat. Could we come inside? Just for a quick visit. We won’t stay long.”
“I don’t know.” Frank glanced back at Burnfingers.
“Some of my best friends are fish,” came the reply. “Fishy, anyway.”
Why the hell not? Frank wondered. He rolled the window down all the way.
Given their speed, the entering fish should have been accompanied by a stiff breeze, but there was no wind at all. They came in wiggling their fins. They poked curiously at everything and everyone, but they couldn’t do any harm because they had no hands.
“A nice shape,” one of the orange visitors decided. “Next week it might be different, but right now it’s a nice shape.”
“We’re very big on streamlining, you know,” its companion declared. “It’s hard to be both elegant and streamlined.”
“A machine,” the other announced with satisfaction. It was poking at the stove like a bottom feeder hunting for worms. “We haven’t seen machines in—actually I can’t remember the last time I saw a machine. Or if I ever did.”
“It’s nice to have visitors,” said the first. “We don’t get many. This isn’t a very busy road.”
“I can see why,” said Frank fervently. “You might arrive looking like one thing and leave looking like something else. Or nothing else.”
