“Who’d believe us?” Frank punctuated the rhetorical question with a grunt of disdain. “I can see it now. We could have the Blockers and the McIntyres over for a slide show.” He raised his voice theatrically.
“Here we are in Hell—notice the demons at the tables? Observe the stuffed children mounted on the walls. Here we are on the highway to nowhere, and this one now, this is the one that takes you off the edge of the world. This place that looks like Las Vegas? It’s really on another planet. You can tell by the guy with the root growing out of his head and the lady with the purple fur on her face.
“This dump is Salt Lake City, only it’s after they’ve dropped the Big One, which is why the streets haven’t been swept in a while. Yeah, we should’ve taken pictures.” He concluded by making a rude noise.
“Well, we could have looked at them,” she persisted.
“No, thanks, hon. If we get out of this, the last thing I want is anything to remind me of it. I’ll be real happy to put it behind me. Way behind me.”
“But you won’t be able to do that, darling.”
“No,” he grumbled. “I guess I won’t.”
Burnfingers leaned close, nodding. “Looks like light up ahead.”
A patch of sunlight grew in the distance, which was intriguing since there was no sun in sight. It illuminated an intersection. Frank slowed up as they approached.
It was a sextupal crossing. Signs littered posts or hung in midair. There was also a single homey red stop sign. The rest were unrecognizable. A few were composed of pure light. Others busily rearranged themselves as they looked on. The variety of the display was impressive.
Beyond the intersection lay a large parcel of land composed of sand and gravel. It occupied a circle several hundred yards in diameter. Void abutted it on all sides. In the middle of this patch of suspended grit stood a simple frame structure painted dark brown with white trim. Its tin roof sparkled under the false, sourceless sunshine. A half dozen fuel islands surrounded the main building. They resembled abstract sculpture more than they did gas pumps.
As the motor home stood idling behind the stop sign, what appeared to be a metallic flying fish folded its wings and settled down across from one of the pumps. There was a pause before a small bolt of lightning leaped from pump to vehicle. A creature that resembled a protozoan with legs hopped out of the fish-car, did something to the pump, and then climbed back inside its machine. The filmy wings unfurled, the head of the fish turned, and the streamlined shape shot down one of the other roads so fast only the shock of its disappearance echoed in their memories.
As near as Frank had been able to tell, it had never once made contact with the ground.
A pair of other vehicles stood parked in the lot to the right of the building. One was a large boulder on treads. The other looked like a cluster of titanium bamboo surmounted by a brass bubble encircled by a single treadless wheel. The bubble was big enough to hold an elephant, the wheel less than a yard thick. Frank tried to see how it remained balanced.
Smoke rose lazily from a brick chimney at the rear of the building. As they crossed the intersection they saw that the sign over the entrance changed characters as fast as individual frames on a videotape. One frame read CAFÉ before vanishing in favor of blurred alien hieroglyphs.
“Probably says the same thing in hundreds of different languages,” Flucca suggested. “But it’s a restaurant. You can smell it.”
“Wonder if they can smell us.” A check of the gas gauge revealed less than half a tank left. He wondered if he could top off their tanks here. If they sold lightning bolts, maybe he could buy premium unleaded, too.
There was plenty of room to park alongside the giant treadless wheel. He pulled up carefully, set the brake. Fifty yards to the right, sunlight and solid ground gave way to void. It was with considerable relief he gingerly stepped out onto unyielding earth.
Flucca hopped down and hurried past him. “Wonder what kind of place this is and what it’s doing here?”
“If this is a reality line it is surely a short one,” was all Burnfingers could say.
“A bit of reality apart from any other.” Mouse turned slowly, studying their surroundings. “A drifting fragment, held in place only by this intersection. Astonishing.”
“Interesting chunk of real estate, all right.” Flucca was leading the way toward the entrance. “Wonder what the food’s like?”
Thoughts of real food set off a small bomb in Frank’s belly. None of them had enjoyed a real meal since leaving behind the Cedar City that was too full of truth to be their reality. He indicated the brass bubble and its neighbor.
“Looks like they have a few customers already.”
“Never saw a place yet fond of turning business away.” Flucca reached for the handle of the front door.
The café’s interior was nothing like what any of them expected because it looked exactly like what they were familiar with. It was no different from any of a hundred similar establishments you would encounter traveling along a rural state highway.
They took a table near a front window with a view of the parking lot and fuel islands. The Formica tabletop was lined on the side with fluted metal strips. Legs solid as railroad iron supported it. There were salt and pepper shakers and a big glass sugar dispenser with a stick of vanilla inside to maintain freshness, paper napkins and cheap metal silverware. A cluster of laminated menus shared a plastic stand with the napkins. Everything looked and felt familiar. Gazing out the window, Frank half expected to see cars whizzing past, mountains and cacti in the distance. But there was only the parking lot, pumps, sourceless sunshine and, off in the distance, the blackness of the abyss.
That’s when the voice startled him out of his reverie. “Now, then, whut kin I git for you folks?”
14
THE HEAVYSET WOMAN regarding them patiently was in her midforties. Her bleached blond hair was piled in swirls atop her head, a sweeping abstract sculpture. She wore a plain white waitress’s uniform. Two pens peeped from the lip of a blouse pocket. One hand held a third, the other a yellow note pad. Gum snapped as she chewed. Her cheeks were pale rose.
“What is this place?” Wendy spoke first. “No—where is this place?”
Chiclet popped, punctuating each sentence. “This place? Why, this here’s the Conjunction. Me and Max, we run the whole joint.” She nodded proudly toward the kitchen, from which strange and wondrous odors emanated, not to mention the thick aroma of hot grease. “We’ve been here for some time. I take it this is the first time out this way for you folks?” She scanned them approvingly. “Always nice to see new faces. We got enough regulars as it is.” She hefted pad and pencil, 160 pounds of kitchen computer instantly on-line. “I expect you’d like something to eat.”
Frank didn’t reply. His attention was drawn to a booth on the other side of the restaurant. Its occupants could only be the drivers of the two extraordinary machines parked outside.
A giant green caterpillar wearing wraparound blue sunshades sat across the table from a tall, thin creature built of petrified Silly Putty. Taking up an enormous chair out in the aisle was a walrus-sized quadruped with engraved tusks and hands like a pianist’s. He wore dark gray dungarees and waved his hands animatedly as he spoke. Most of his sentences were directed to the caterpillar. The Silly Putty person sat and sipped silently from a glass two feet tall and an inch in diameter.
“Sorry?” Frank blinked, leaned back in his chair.
“Asked what I could git ya.” The waitress started to slide her pencil behind one ear. “I can see you folks are tired. I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
“No, no, that’s all right,” Alicia said quickly. “Could I—do you have coffee?”
“Don’t see why not. What else we sellin’ today?”
“I wanna chocolate shake,” Steven told her, “with whipped cream on top!”
His mother bent close to him. “Steven, we don’t know if a place like this carries anything like—”
