“Don’t get funny. What about you? If I’m gonna look ridiculous I don’t want to do it alone.”
“All right.” She closed her eyes and strained. Her arms did not multiply, but a faint pink aura appeared in the air surrounding her, a rose-hued mist. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I can’t do it.”
“But you did something else,” Mouse told her. “Try again.”
Alicia took a deep breath and concentrated. Soon a tremendous feeling of health and well-being filled the motor home, wiping away fear and concern, relaxing them all, reassuring and warming. It radiated from Alicia, a pure femininity encompassing sensuality and maternal affection. Frank recognized it right away. He’d felt it before, only nowhere near as powerfully. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to his wife. She’d always had it. The difference here was that instead of concealing it within, she could let it spread outward like a bracing pink wave.
She slumped, blinking. “That felt good, even if I didn’t grow any extra arms.”
“It made all of us feel good.” Mouse was smiling. “That’s a very special ability, Alicia. Maybe more than roads intersect at this place.”
“Hey, look at me, everybody!”
They all turned. Flucca stood in the middle of the motor home, gesturing excitedly. “Watch this.” As they stared, two Fluccas ran toward each other and melted together, like a trick on television.
“Do that again,” Burnfingers asked him.
“No problem.” Snapping his fingers for effect, the dwarf executed a neat pirouette. One of him jumped left, the other to the right, and once more there were two of him. The first jumped on the second’s shoulders. Four stubby arms extended parallel to the floor.
“I always knew I was a normal-sized person. But there was only half of me in the real world.”
“Maybe more than half,” Burnfingers suggested. “Try it again.”
“Really? You think so?” Both Fluccas spoke simultaneously. It was purer than stereo. Both snapped their fingers at the same time, jumped—and the back of the motor home was occupied by four very short Mexican chefs.
“That’s enough,” said Frank. Looking at the four Fluccas hurt his head.
“The unending Niccolo.” Burnfingers’s voice had fallen to a whisper. “I wonder how many of him there really are?”
“More than meets the eye, which is what I’ve been telling people for years.” Like the cards in Alice in Wonderland, he jumped back together until only one of him stood before them. “Always was my own best company.”
“What about you, Mouse?” It was Alicia who posed the query. “What can your secret self do?”
“I am a singer. I am a singer here, I was a singer in your reality, I would be a singer on any reality line. Nothing more or less.”
Disappointed, Alicia looked past her. “Then what about you, Burnfingers?”
“I do not know.” He peered back at Flucca. “What should I do? Snap my fingers, or turn a circle, or hold my breath?”
“Try and let your inner self emerge,” Mouse told him. “I think that’s what the fish meant.”
“All right. Hey-ah.”
He stood up, smiling. A serious smile this time, not sappy or half-cocked. As they looked on, he began to grow. Slowly at first, then more rapidly. His head bumped the ceiling.
“Maybe I had better go outside.”
“I dunno.” Frank hurriedly checked the windows.
“The fish are not going to carry me away.” He opened the door and stepped outside.
As he grew, his body diffused. The ground did not splinter under his weight. In minutes he was a thousand feet tall and several hundred wide. It was possible to see through his vapor-thin feet.
“That’s enough, Burnfingers!” Alicia had rolled down her window and leaned out to watch. Now she yelled worriedly. Frank crowded behind her while the children, Mouse, and Flucca spread themselves from the door to the rear windows.
A thin voice drifted down to them from up among the clouds. “I can’t stop. I cannot stop myself.”
“You gotta stop!” Frank shouted.
“Please, Burnfingers! It’s not funny anymore!” Alicia screamed.
“It never was very funny.” They couldn’t see his face anymore. “But it sure is enlightening.”
Then he was gone. Or it seemed he was gone. They argued about it. Neither Frank nor Alicia could see anything, but Mouse insisted Burnfingers Begay was still standing there, his position unchanged.
Frank straightened. “I knew he shouldn’t have gone outside. I knew it. The only reality we’ve got left is in here. As soon as he went out, that was all she wrote. No more links with his own reality.”
“He’s still there,” said Mouse, disagreeing fervently.
“Yeah? Where?” Frank made a show of studying the terrain outside. “I don’t see him.”
“He kept growing,” she insisted. “As he grows, he becomes more spread out, until the atoms of his body are so far apart it’s the same as if he’s become transparent. Now he is an echo of a shadow of an outline.”
“Solid like a brick,” Frank muttered.
“Say, rather, less than an echo but more than a memory.” She stood in the open doorway, staring at the strange land beyond.
“What do we do now?” There was sadness in Alicia’s voice. Though at first suspicious of him, she’d grown quite fond of Burnfingers Begay, and not only because he’d risked his life to help rescue her and her children from the mutants of a devastated Salt Lake City. She’d come to like him for himself.
“We stay here until we’re sure which road to try or until our food runs out, whichever comes first. That’s all I know how to do. Mouse?”
She didn’t reply, just kept staring out the open door.
15
THEY WAITED IN VAIN for a sunset. If there was a sun hereabouts, it worked longer hours than their own. Rather than coming from a source in the sky, the light of this country was evenly distributed, like particles suspended in water. Eventually they slept despite the ceaseless illumination.
Frank was dozing when Steven’s excited voice woke him.
“Dad, Mom, everybody, wake up!”
Frank’s eyelids rose ponderously. “What is it? What’s the matter, kiddo?”
“It’s Burnfingers! He’s coming back!”
“Steven, no!”
Ignoring his mother, the boy threw open the door and dashed outside. Everyone in the motor home rushed for the windows.
