“Not a chance, Small Chef.” Burnfingers brushed him aside. Frank was startled to see that the big man was hyperventilating. Apparently he’d stood the confinement as long as he was able.
Before anyone could stop him, which would likely have been an impossible task in any event, he pushed the door open and jumped out. Air rushed through, sweeping aside the staleness of the previous days. It was rich with the aroma of saltwater, green growing things, and comforting warmth. It drew them to the doorway.
Burnfingers was doing a dance ten yards distant, hooting gleefully and kicking up sand. “It is all right, it is good!” Ignoring their stares, he knelt to grab a handful of sand and rub it over his face. Then he toppled slowly onto his back, arms spread wide, eyes regarding the clouds.
“Is he dead?” Alicia wondered fearfully.
“Naw.” Frank used the handgrip to ease himself out, thrilled to be standing on solid ground once more. “He’s just enjoying the sunshine.”
Wendy followed her father. Alicia exited next, inhaling the fresh air. Frank watched her breasts rise and fall, marveling at the thoughts that can occur to a man even in times of serious crisis. Mouse was standing alongside his wife, and his subsequent thoughts embarrassed him deeply.
Burnfingers hadn’t budged. While the others joined him in relaxing for the first time in days, Frank spent the time giving the motor home a thorough examination.
There was ample proof that their deep-sea drive had been anything but a dream. Rank saltwater was still dripping from the roof. Bottom-dwelling fish and crustaceans unlucky enough to have been caught in the axles and bumpers were starting to decay in the sun. Some had exploded messily under the pressure change. Flucca wandered over to help him with the cleanup.
“Look at this one.” The little man held up a three-foot-long fish with minuscule fins. The body was barely an inch in diameter. Two feelers as long as the body itself protruded from the skull. It twitched once in Flucca’s grasp.
“We’ve been through a lot of madness, but this last has to be the ultimate. We all oughta be as dead as that eel thing. And this,” Frank said as he tapped the metal side of the motor home, “should be scrap.”
“Some things they still build well,” was all Flucca could think of to say.
After circling the vehicle one last time to convince himself it was still intact, Frank and Flucca rejoined the others.
“Isn’t this a beautiful spot?” Alicia was surveying the little bay where they’d emerged from the sea, shading her gaze from a tropical sun. “Maybe when this is all over we can come back here.”
“If it’s on our reality line, yeah.” There was a harshness to his tone he hadn’t intended. He turned to Mouse. “You said we were ‘real close.’ You’ve been spouting that line ever since we picked you up.”
“Distance is a relative matter, Frank Sonderberg. North we must go a little ways farther yet.”
“What happens when we get there?” Wendy asked her. “To this Vanishing Point, I mean.”
“When we get there? When we get there, child, why then you will hear me sing.”
“But we’ve already heard you sing.”
Mouse shook her head slowly. “No. You haven’t heard me sing. Really sing. Not yet.” She continued to stare northward. “But I think there is yet time for that. Yet time.”
“Then let’s get moving.” Frank turned toward the motor home.
“I know we have to find Steven,” Alicia said to him, “but don’t you think you should rest a little?”
“We’ll rest when this is done. In our own reality, which we’re not sure this is yet.” He trudged through the sand toward the only reality he’d known for days. Reluctantly, his family followed.
“Not home.” Burnfingers Begay brushed sand from his pants and sleeves. “Hot enough, but the palm trees do not belong. Arizona has plenty of beach. Just no ocean.”
Wendy laughed and Alicia smiled, but not Frank. His sense of humor was stuck on another reality line. He wouldn’t laugh again until his family was back together and Burnfingers Begay and Mouse and Niccolo Flucca and the Anarchis and Chaos had all been jammed back into the unimportant corner of his mind where they belonged.
The motor home balked when he started the engine. It jerked forward, hesitated, balked again. The exhaust pipe spat water and dead fish all over the pristine beach. Gritting his teeth, Frank kept trying it until the engine cleared. By the time they pulled into the northbound lane of the narrow road, it was running smoothly again.
The terrain was a patchwork: emerald outcrops of dense vegetation consisting of palms, ferns, and brilliant flowers alternating with barren fields of rough dark lava. As the road crossed a narrow spit that extended out into the ocean, they came into view of a towering active volcano. It reminded Frank too much of the first stop on their odyssey through alternate realities.
Mouse’s reaction was very different. “The place!” she declared excitedly. “The marker. The smoking harbinger. Very soon now, very soon.” She was standing between his seat and Alicia’s, staring intently forward.
Soon they were driving along a thin strip of road with ocean on one side and sheer cliffs on the other. Rocks lying in the road kept Frank glancing nervously at the plant-choked wall of stone on their left. The road had been sliced from the sheer rock at great expense, yet no one seemed to use it. Since leaving the beach they hadn’t seen another vehicle, another sign of life.
“Wherever we’re going we’d better get there soon,” he muttered. “I don’t know how it’s lasted this long, but we’ve about run out.” He indicated the fuel gauge. The digital readout rested on empty. “We’re down to emergency gas, if there is any. Must be, because we’re still goin’.”
“There! Turn there!”
It threw Frank for a moment because it was so rare that Mouse shouted. He hit the brakes harder than was necessary, then crept forward until they reached the turnoff she’d indicated.
The steep, narrow dirt track occupied a cleft in the rocks. Concealed as it was by thick ferns and other growths, it was all but invisible from the main road. He would have driven past it a hundred times without suspecting its presence. Reluctantly, he turned into the opening. It was barely wide enough to admit the motor home. Occasionally the metal sides scraped rock.
Tropical flora closed in around them. It was as if they were traveling down a long, green tunnel. At times the ferns packing the open space in search of scarce sunlight were so thick they completely blocked the windshield. Frank had to drive slowly and by feel, praying there were no sharp dips or unexpected bends or drop-offs ahead. Soon the road itself disappeared. They continued to advance up the streambed, which had cut the canyon. A trickle of water ran down the center, disappearing between their wheels and reemerging in their wake.
After half an hour of driving across terrain that the motor home had never been designed to handle, the tunnel opened onto a much wider but equally steep-sided canyon.
Walls of volcanic rock towered hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. In places they were nearly vertical. Everywhere was dense vegetation. It looked like films Frank had seen of New Guinea or the South Pacific, though there was no reason to believe they were anywhere in either vicinity, or even on the same reality line where such familiar places existed.
Mouse stood close by, nodding and murmuring incomprehensibly to herself. In the absence of further instruction he kept going.
The streambed filled up and became more like a road again, silt muting the bumps and bounces. The squeaking, complaining suspension gave every indication of failing utterly at any moment.
They topped a small rise in the middle of the canyon valley. Ahead, the by now awesome walls enclosing them on all sides came together. Almost. Where they nearly met, a thin sliver of sky showed clearly. Everything ended at that place. Or extended from it, Frank thought. The canyon, the vegetation, the little stream, even the sky and sunlight all angled toward that narrow passage.
Mouse sighed heavily. “There it is.”
“There what is?” he asked tiredly.
