Gritting his teeth, adrenaline surging through his veins, he hung tight to the wheel as for the third time the motor home slammed into the body of the Anarchis. He thought he saw it contort violently as it tried to strike at the individual holding the end of the lariat.
The sunlight turned silver. At the same time, Mouse’s song, which had been overpowered by the bellowing of the Anarchis, swept over them in a great wave of sound. He flung up his arms to protect his eyes.
The rear wheels rose from the ground first. Then the entire machine was blown forward as if by a tremendous gust of wind. At the last instant Frank saw the true eyes of the Anarchis, yellow like contaminated water. They flew at the very face of Chaos.
A calmness filled him, the knowledge that he’d done the right thing. That Mouse had at last come to the end of her song. The cry of despair that rang in his head came not from the musicians or his strange companions or from his precariously positioned son but from the intensely evil thing wrapped around the front of the motor home.
The cry and the music still echoed through his brain as he regained consciousness. The seatbelt held him upright in the driver’s seat. A concerned face gazed into his own.
“Frank? Hey man, you all right?”
He blinked at Flucca and tried to straighten. At the Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles there was a big taffy machine that ran round the clock; pushing and pulling, pushing and stretching. He felt like it had been working on his body. Only when he was reasonably confident he wouldn’t fall over in a dead heap did he permit himself to unsnap the seatbelt.
“Pretty slick driving, Dad.”
It was Steven, looming larger than ever. The fancy cowboy outfit was gone, replaced by clean jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Easy for an obulator to change clothes, Frank mused. Could be that everything would be easy for Steven from now on. Anyone who could learn how to swap youth for age and fat for muscle could surely manage a quick change of attire.
“Where are we, kiddo?”
“Back where we belong, Dad. On our own reality line. That’s what Mouse says, anyway, and I’m inclined to agree with her.”
“Me, too.” He looked up sharply. “The Spinner?”
“Spinning smoothly, soothed and rhythmic. All’s right with the Cosmos again.”
“Frank?”
He recognized his wife’s voice. Steven moved aside to let her through. She glanced in wonder at her mature son before moving to hug her husband.
“It worked, Frank. Thanks to you and Niccolo and Steven and Wendy and everybody else, it worked. Mouse finished her song.”
“Just in time, too.” He looked past her, reluctant to disengage from her arms. “Where is she?”
The motor home was a wreck. Food and linens, dishes and utensils were scattered everywhere. Not unnatural, since they were lying in the old streambed at a thirty-degree angle. He turned and peered out the window on his side. The glass was cracked but still in place.
A few hummingbirds flitted from flower to flower. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t see any little people riding them. However, one flew right up to the window and stared in at him for a very long time before it turned to dart back into the trees.
“Finished the song on a rising note,” Steven was saying.
“I heard that note. That’s when everything blanked out.”
“The Anarchis went with it. With the Spinner soothed, its reason for being in that place was no more. It’s gone back beyond order and logic to lick its wounds for a while.” He grinned. “Still got my lariat wrapped around it. It’s gonna have a hell of a time ridding itself of all that excess gravity. I don’t think it’ll trouble any reality for some time.”
“You always did like fooling with ropes and cowboy stuff—when you were a kid.”
“I’m sorry, Dad—Mom. I know I didn’t give you much of a childhood, but I think I make a much better man than I did a boy. I’m gonna try to make it up to you.”
“Just warn us if you’re gonna do any obulating in the house,” Frank told him, “and don’t ask to borrow the car.”
Wendy was standing in the doorway, staring out at the green canyon that lay on the right side of the Vanishing Point. “I hope she makes it back home. Mouse, I mean. She said I had a future as a musician.” She looked back at her parents. “Me, can you imagine? But she told me to try another instrument.”
“I’m sure she’ll get home okay.” Steven moved up behind his formerly big, now little sister. “She’s probably on her way to another concert already, to sing to something like the Spinner or maybe just to the stars. I wonder if we’ll ever see her again?”
“I hope not.”
Alicia eyed her husband in surprise. “I thought you liked her, Frank?”
“She’s okay, but she’s also trouble. I don’t want any more trouble.”
He rose from the seat, his muscles throbbing, and went to talk to the rest of the wayward band. Burnfingers Begay was standing in a bed of tropical blossoms, chatting with Flucca. Both turned to greet him.
“How does the Grand Prix driver feel?” Burnfingers inquired solicitously.
“Like he ran into a wall.” Frank grimaced. “Felt real enough.” He turned to study their situation.
The motor home’s wheels were buried deep in the sandy bed of the little stream. They’d need a diesel truck tow just to budge it.
Behind them, where the narrow strip of light marking the location of the Vanishing Point ought to have been, there was only solid rock, a stone cul-de-sac. A small waterfall tumbled over the top of the unbroken cliff to feed the rivulet that ran beneath the motor home. Frank was about to ask if it had all been a dream, there at the last, when his eyes caught the faint glint of light on gold. Burnfigers Begay’s remarkable flute protruded from his back pocket, catching the sunlight like a long golden straw. Not a dream, then.
Certainly Steven wasn’t.
“Looks like we walk,” he said simply.
Burnfingers eased the burden of the long hike by tooting cheerily on his instrument, mixing Native American tunes with jazz and classics.
“You know,” Frank said to his son, “the one thing I still can’t figure are those damn fish. They didn’t look particularly clever and they didn’t act especially helpful.”
“Angelfish, Dad. Angelfish.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
He was still mulling that over when they reached the highway. It was the same highway they’d turned off a short eternity ago. It was also still deserted.
Frank turned and gazed back the way they’d come. Ferns and palms obscured the narrow canyon, making it invisible from the road. Alicia’s voice jolted him out of his memories.
“Which way should we go from here?”
All of a sudden he didn’t care. Sporting goods stores, television, gambling no longer struck him as important to the scheme of things as hummingbirds, small yellow flowers, and having his family around him.
“We were headed north when we turned off here.” Burnfingers started up the pavement. “Might as well go on that way.”
They hadn’t walked far when a low rumbling noise sounded behind them. For a bad moment Frank thought of telling everyone to scatter among the few trees clinging to the rock wall. His panic proved unjustified.
The big Dodge van slowed as it drew near, stopped in the far lane. The puzzled driver rolled down his window and leaned out for a better look at them. His hair was black and curly and he wore a bright red shirt imprinted with flowers.
“What you folks doin’ out here? You on the wrong side of the island.”
“Our motor home broke down a ways back,” Frank told him truthfully.
