The wondrous music of the trio continued to reach their ears through the motor home’s walls, raising their spirits as it soothed the Spinner. Frank swung the motor home around, raced the engine, and then slammed his foot on the accelerator. No dragster, the Winnebago picked up speed gradually, but in a couple of minutes it was thundering toward the canyon at a very respectable velocity and gaining more every second. Whatever it struck would know it had been hit.
He wondered if they’d make contact inside the Vanishing Point or out in the real world, and if it would make a difference. His fingers tightened on the wheel. Probably wasn’t his world out there, anyway. In his world the Pacific hadn’t invaded the land and monsters didn’t run rampant in the streets of Los Angeles. Despite the gravity of the moment, he found he could still grin. Not south of Sunset Boulevard they didn’t, anyway.
Flucca kept an eye out for possible obstacles, rocks or logs. There were none on the perfectly flat plateau. There was only grass and flowers, which sprang back with unnatural vigor in the wake of the motor home’s heavy tires.
They could see the Anarchis squeezing through the Vanishing Point, like black toothpaste boiling out of its tube. It was driving a swirling cloud of terrified hummingbirds and little people before it. As they neared the roiling mass, Frank was able to identify individual shapes held tightly within. There were the devils and demons from Hades Junction, off to the side the shifting hulks of the alien thugs who’d tried to steal Burnfingers Begay’s precious gold at Pass Regulus, and behind them the armed and raging mutants from the fringes of a nuked Salt Lake City. Mixed in and among these more familiar evils were the killers and gargoyles, which had frolicked amid an inundated Los Angeles.
It rolled toward them, expanding as it emerged from the canyon. Bulging eyes and barbed tongues flared from its surface, as unstable and everchanging as the Chaos that was its master.
“I’m only sorry you never got the chance to taste my cooking,” Flucca murmured solemnly.
“Yeah, me too.” Frank closed his eyes. Good-bye, Alicia. Good-bye, Wendy. Good-bye, Steven, wherever you are.
Plowing into the center of the writhing black storm, the motor home scattered teeth and eyeballs, mutants and devils in every direction. Frank’s eyes opened involuntarily, to reveal that they were driving through a substance like thin tar. Then the Anarchis began to recover from the shock of being struck by so much relentless reality. Evil and darkness closed tight around them, thick as molasses. They could no longer hear Mouse’s exhilarating song.
Sly tendrils of night began to ooze into the motor home, seeping through imperfect joints, working their way beneath the weather stripping that lined the windows. The bubble of reality that had held back tons of seawater was unable to halt the invasion.
Frank wrenched at the wheel with one hand as he used the other to swat at the cloying darkness. Maybe they could swing clear and come around for another run. The darkness recoiled from his flailing hand like a live thing, insubstantial tentacles searching for just the right opening. Flucca fought the feral probes with a frying pan.
The motor home rumbled clear of the cloud, evil trailing behind like a clinging black contrail. Swinging around, Frank saw between coughs that they’d slowed but not stopped its advance. Mouse and the others continued with their song as though oblivious to the danger crawling across the plateau toward them.
“Hang on!” Frank yelled.
For a second time they smashed into the storm front that was the Anarchis. This time it was ready for them. Penetration came faster, the tendrils reached for them without hesitation. Frank thought the smoke laughed, a hideous, unpleasant chuckle. Coils of it encircled his arms, then his wrists. Another that had slipped up through the heating elements contracted around the foot he kept resolutely jammed to the accelerator.
He tried to bring the heavy vehicle around for a third attack, but he could feel himself losing control. Hands were firmly disengaged from the wheel as his foot was lifted from the gas pedal. Flucca made a dive for it, only to run headlong into a wall of dark, pulsing smoke.
A thin tendril wrapped itself round his forehead and dipped down to arc up his left nostril. Frank coughed, tried to choke it out, knew instinctively that if it crept down inside it would fill his lungs and throat with unbreathable horror. He cut through it with the edge of one hand only to see it re-form instantly.
The light inside the motor home was going out, together with the light that was his life. He hoped only that he and Flucca had bought the others enough time to complete the work.
Drifting through the darkness came a dinner plate. It had eyes and stripes, though whether it was black with white stripes or black on white he couldn’t tell. Lack of oxygen was impairing his vision. As it drew near he added fins and tail to his final catalogue of proximate observations.
“Impolite,” it ventured coolly.
“Quite,” said a similar voice.
The three angelfish floated in the center of the motor home. The Anarchis tried to swallow them as it had swallowed the motor home and all its contents. Each time a smoky tendril made contact with shining scales it recoiled as if in pain.
Frank waited for the third fish to speak and complete the tripartite hallucination. It might have done so had it not been superseded by yet a fourth voice.
“Hi, Dad.”
19
AN UNFELT WIND swept the strands of the Anarchis from the motor home’s interior, though blackness still enclosed them on all sides. Frank hastily grabbed the wheel and hit the brake. Not even an impossible rescue could save them if he drove over the edge of the plateau. Claws and rasping tongues scratched at the windshield in frustrated fury. Only a few isolated puffs of darkness remained inside the motor home, and the angelfish were methodically herding them outside. Frank gaped at the tall young man standing behind him.
“Steven?”
The unanticipated visitor smiled. Only then did Frank recognize his son.
“Sorry I took so long to get here, Dad, but it was a long way and I wanted to be sure I could do something when I got back.”
Instead of the overweight, slightly porcine ten-year-old raised on a steady diet of junk food and junk television, the Steven leaning against the back of Flucca’s chair stood six-three and weighed a compact two twenty. He’d aged along with his inexplicable growth. Frank would have guessed him to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight.
He was clad in a sheepskin vest with the fleece facing outward, over a red and blue pearl-buttoned Western shirt. Below were jeans, snakeskin belt, and leather chaps beneath which boots flashed. Boots and shirt tabs were capped with gold. His Western hat was dusty brown encircled by a second reptilian band. Ivory-handled Colts rested in holsters slung from his belt, along with a shining lariat fashioned of something other than hemp. Always the would-be cowboy, Frank mused.
“I’ve heard about kids who grew up too fast,” Flucca commented, “but this is ridiculous.”
Steven smiled at him. Gone along with the fat was any suggestion of hesitation or uncertainty. He’d been transformed emotionally as well as physically.
“Nothing’s ridiculous about obulating.”
“What the hell is that, anyway?” his father demanded to know.
Steven pushed his hat back on his forehead. “It’s kinda hard to describe. You might think of it as experience attained through travel. It’s like reading a book only you’re in it for real. Helps you mature in a hurry.”
“No kiddin’.”
“I’ve been through a lot of realities, Dad. It was a help to have guides.” He indicated the three hovering angelfish. “On the other hand, I’m afraid I’m overqualified for Little League now.” He gazed out the front window. “Looks like the crisis has come. All reality’s at stake. I’ve learned a lot about reality and unreality. I figure I’ve acquired enough experience to be of some help.”
“Someone sings,” said one of the angelfish, “and sings beautifully.”
“It will restore the Spinner’s rhythm,” said one of the orange fish, “but only if she is given time to finish. We must restrain the Anarchis a little longer.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do.” Frank kept a wary eye on the angry darkness beyond the glass as he spoke. “It’s like trying to fight smoke.”
“You have done well,” the other orange fish told him. “Steel is good for weakening Chaos. Aluminum is better still. Now we can help, too.” It was drifting less than a foot from Frank’s face now, regarding him from the bottom of flat black eyes. Disconcerted, Frank looked past it toward his son.
