“It’s all right, Dad.” The little-boy voice was confident but very faint now. “Everything’s gonna be okay. You guys go on. Don’t worry about me, and tell Mom not to worry, too. I’m with my friends.”
It didn’t take Frank long to run out of breath. He slowed, stopped, bending over and sucking air as he rested on the grass that grew above the ground. He lifted his gaze and stared until the school became tiny specks surrounding a slightly larger speck. Then there was only a single speck.
Then there was nothing.
Forcing down the lump in his throat, he turned and walked slowly back to the motor home. They were all waiting for him, silent. He ignored everyone’s eyes but Alicia’s.
“We have to go after him,” she said softly.
“How?” It was a frustrated growl. “This is a Winnebago. Not a spaceship, not an airplane.”
“Well, we have to do something. We can’t just leave him here.” She was looking past him toward the horizon.
He leaned against the doorjamb. “What do you suggest we do?”
She had no reply to that. It was left to Mouse to comment. “We must go on.” The words were painful in the stillness of the day. “Remember, if we linger too long in any one place it will enable the Anarchis to locate us. Then all will be lost.”
Frank turned to her, his tone bitter. “What about my son?”
“Little warrior did not look to be in danger.” Burnfingers, too, was staring into the distance. “He said they were his friends. He was very certain. I think they are, and I think they will take care of him.”
“But he’ll be marooned here if we drive off! He’ll be stuck on this reality line with no way of finding his way home.”
“He seemed sure he would.” Burnfingers looked down at his distraught companion. “Always children have to trust their parents. I think maybe this time you are going to have to trust him.”
“Trust him? Trust him to what? A bunch of refugees from some airborne aquarium?”
“I think they are more than what they seem.”
“What,” asked Alicia numbly, “is ‘obulating’?”
No one knew. No one even had an idea. Not Burnfingers Begay, not even Mouse.
“It must be something really unique or special for him to leave his parents over it,” Flucca observed.
“He’s just a kid,” Frank snapped. “He doesn’t know what’s going on here. He doesn’t know what anything’s about. To him it’s all a big game.”
“No, Dad.” Wendy put an arm around her father’s shoulders. She was looking out past him, in the direction her brother and his friends had gone. “He knows it’s not a game. Steven’s, like, a pain sometimes. I guess all little brothers are. But he’s pretty smart. He didn’t think Hell was a game, and I know he didn’t think that place we just left was a game, when we were in that cage, and I don’t think he thinks it’s a game now.”
She was interrupted by a distant rumbling, the throaty purr of something darker than hunger on the prowl. Flucca scurried to the rear of the motor home to peer out the back window.
“It’s getting dark in back of us, folks, and it doesn’t look like nighttime that’s coming up on us.”
Mouse looked. “The Anarchis. It’s too close, much too close.” She turned bottomless eyes to Frank. “We must go now. If we’re trapped here it will be the end of everything, including hope. The end of my mission to help the Spinner, of your chance to see your son again, of all of us. Do you know anything about the Unified Field Theory?”
“Huh, what?” Frank shook himself, blinked, turned away from the far horizon that had swallowed his boy.
“The Anarchis is kind of a unified field. It’s Chaos and Evil personified. If we don’t get away from here fast we won’t do your son any good at all.”
“But if it’s coming this way,” Alicia said, “and Steven’s still here…”
“I think he’s gone.” Mouse nodded toward the horizon. “With his friends. And I don’t think he’s coming back to this spot whether you’re here or not.” It was a cold thing to say, but with the entire sky behind them blackening rapidly Mouse had no time to lavish on tact. “He’s gone away with his friends, obulated or whatever it is they do. The only way you can help him now is by helping yourselves. We must go on.”
“All right.” An uncaring numbness had taken hold of Frank. His son was gone. Having accepted that, he found he didn’t much care what happened anymore. Not on this reality line or anyone else’s. All he wanted was his boy back.
But he was intelligent enough to realize he was out of his depth, caught up in a maelstrom of implausibilities beyond his or anyone else’s experience. Without any knowledge or ideas of his own he had to rely on people like Mouse and Burnfingers Begay to tell him what to do. Mouse said they had to go on. So he would go on. He climbed inside and moved purposefully toward the driver’s seat.
Alicia followed closely. “Frank …?”
He shook off her hand, grimly inspecting the instruments. “Mouse says we can’t stay here. So we’ve got to go.”
“If we leave this reality he’ll never find us. We’ll never see him again, Frank.”
He looked up at his wife. He couldn’t smile. His mouth wasn’t working properly. But he tried to sound reassuring anyway. “We don’t know that. Just like we don’t know anything else here.” He started the engine. At least something responded to his wishes, he told himself.
“Frank, he’s only a ten-year-old boy. If he doesn’t know where he is now, how will he ever know where to find us?”
“Maybe the damn fish will show him. How the hell do I know?” Seeing the hurt on her face, he softened his tone. “Look, sweetheart. We don’t have any choice. We can’t stay here. Even if we could, I don’t think the kid’s coming back right away anyhow.”
“Dad’s right, Mom.” Wendy tried to comfort her mother, who was on the verge of tears. “I don’t like leaving the little brat here, either, but like Mouse says, we don’t even know if he’s here anymore. This is the craziest place we’ve been yet. Maybe—maybe he’s on his way home already. Maybe that’s where the fish took him. He might even be waiting for us.” She made herself sound cheerful. “What if that’s what obulating is? Finding the way home?”
Alicia tried to reply but choked and could only nod.
Frank put the motor home in gear, spoke without looking back over his shoulder. “Which way, chief?”
“Straight ahead. First turn to the right,” Burnfingers told him calmly.
Hoping Alicia wasn’t watching, Frank leaned slightly forward and looked to his right as he pulled out onto the road. There was no sign of Steven or his patrimonial pisceans. Tricky little bastards, he thought furiously. They swim aboard, act curious and friendly, then make off with his kid.
