To the Vanishing Point

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 — "

"One chocolate shake." The waitress made a terse notation on her pad, looked up. "You folks gonna have anything to eat, or you just thirsty?"

A numbed Frank picked up one of the menus, opened the laminated sheets. It was as thick as a small book and full of writing that leaped off the page. He couldn’t read a word of it. Unlike the sign above the entrance, the words did not change as he studied them.

The waitress leaned over his shoulder. She smelled of cheap perfume. He wondered if it was produced by adding liquid to her skin, or if it was her actual body odor, or if it changed like the sign outside to meet the olfactory requirements of an extraordinarily diverse clientele.

"I forgot: you folks are new here." She straightened. "Max is pretty versatile. You just tell me what you’d like and I’ll bet a dime against a dollar he can whip it up."

"Anything?" Frank swallowed, the saliva running inside his mouth like a spring flood.

"Sure. He likes a change now and then. Gets tired of feeding the same specials to the same regulars."

"Okay." One more swallow. "I’d like — a New York strip sirloin, medium well, with grilled onions, baked potato, sour cream and butter on the side, no chives, and whatever the vegetable of the day is." When he finished he was nearly in tears. "Can he — can he do that?"

She grinned down at him, suddenly no longer an inexplicable vision. "What size steak?"

"Twelve — no, ten ounces. I don’t want to overdo it."

Everyone ordered. Fried chicken for Steven, shrimp salad for Wendy and her mother. Mouse requested unfamiliar food in an unrecognizable language while Flucca called for chicken mole with frijoles and rice. Burnfingers Begay waited until everyone else had put in their order before calmly requesting tenderloin of venison filled with trout pate beneath a sour cream-champagne sauce, potatoes au gratin on the side, and haricots verts accompanied by a 1948 Bavarian Liebfraumilch. Not to mention rambutan sorbet for dessert.

"Right." Their waitress scanned the long list before walking back to the kitchen. They could hear her rattling off the orders to an unseen figure behind the grill.

Wendy was shaking her head. "Can you believe this place?"

"It’s no more impossible than everything else that’s happened to us." Her mother was arranging a napkin on her lap. "I don’t see why we shouldn’t believe in it as well."

"Got a good location," Burnfingers observed.

In a few minutes the waitress returned with their drinks: coffee, iced tea, wine, and one towering chocolate milkshake. While they drank, the walrus and his companions rose to leave. Everyone watched them go.

Frank heard their machines start up, peered out the window to observe the departure. The wheeled globe belonged to the Silly Putty creature. Instead of rolling down the road, it rose six feet off the gravel and banked sharply to its left. The wheel was rotating so rapidly around the globe it was less than a blur. The caterpillar and the walrus left in the other vehicle, exploding up the roadway opposite the cafe.

The Sonderbergs were alone in the cafe with their friends.

Twenty minutes later their food emerged from the kitchen. Wendy’s and Alicia’s salads were ice chilled, the shrimp the size of small lobsters, and everything expertly washed and shelled. Frank’s sirloin arrived on a sizzling steel platter. The first bite was purely sensuous. He chewed and swallowed two more before he could find his voice.

"Anybody — anybody else use the road we came in on?"

Their waitress frowned as she stacked serving plates. "Now that you mention it, not for quite a while. Guess that section of road’s under repair. Usually seems to be." Her gum popped, sounding like a small-caliber pistol.

"Does this place have a name?" Flucca’s lips were dark with mole sauce.

"Just the Conjunction." She hesitated, gazing toward the kitchen. "Say, it’s kinda between mealtimes right now. Would you folks mind chatting with Max while you eat? Talking to the customers is one of his biggest pleasures."

Frank’s defenses went up instinctively, relaxed when he saw Steven smiling back at him. "I guess so. Come to think of it, I’d like to meet somebody who can conjure up a meal like this in twenty minutes."

"Great!" She turned and bellowed toward the kitchen. "It’s okay, Maxie! C’mon out and shoot the bull if you want to!"

"Minute!" came the reply from the vicinity of the kitchen. "Just scrapin' the grill!"

They were three-quarters finished with their food and beginning to slow down when the chef finally emerged to join them. His waitress wife was in back of the counter setting places and arranging alien desserts inside a tall glass cylinder.

Max was almost as tall as Burnfingers Begay, and much beefier. He had a permanent five-o’clock shadow and thinning black hair. His wide apron somehow stayed in position without the aid of shoulder straps. As he approached the table he was wiping both huge hands with a dirty towel. On his bare right shoulder Frank identified a tattoo of a naked woman entwined with a snake, beneath which rode a banner and two hearts. Beneath it, in florid script, was the word MOTHER. The other shoulder displayed a tattoo, which traveled from elbow to neck. It resembled nothing on Earth.

"Everything okay, folks?" Each word ended in a grunt, giving Max the sound of an educated hog. He smiled as he listened to a barrage of compliments. "Thanks. Eileen says you folks haven’t been through this way before."

"We’re trying to fix something that’s broke," Steven blurted before anyone could stop him.

Max just nodded. "Trouble with the threads of reality?"

"How did you know?" Mouse was instantly on guard.

"We feed a lot of truckers in here. They know just about everything that’s goin' on anywhere. You look like the fix-it type. Wish you all luck. Hope you put reality to right. Chaos is bad for business."

"As an independent businessman myself," said Frank as he gestured with a forkful of steak, "I can go along with that."

"What sorta business you in, buddy?"

"Sporting goods."

"No foolin'?" The cook was delighted. "That’s great! Used to be big on sports myself until I found out I had this other talent. I was premed in school. Gonna be a designer molecular engineer until I discovered I liked slingin' hash better." He jerked a thumb toward the counter. "Eileen didn’t want to go world-hopping anyway, so when we found this place up for sale it was a natural for us. We’ll never get rich here, but you can’t beat it for gettin' to meet interesting people."

"I can imagine." Alicia sipped her perfect blend of Colombian and Kona coffees.

"We need to top off our tanks, too," Frank told him. "I don’t suppose you carry premium unleaded out here?"

Max scratched beard stubble. "Oh, I reckon we got just about anything you need. Not much good tryin' to run a business if you don’t stock what the customer wants."

"That’s exactly how I feel about it." A sudden thought made Frank frown. "I don’t know how we’re going to pay you. Do you take credit cards?"

"Hell, we take anything." A big hand dug into a pocket beneath the stained apron, emerged holding fragments of metal, plastic, and crystal. Some of the crystals burned with bright internal fires. Max displayed the handful before shoving it back in his pocket.

"You run a place out in the boonies, you better get used to acceptin' some funny money."

"If you’d prefer, I think we can cover the bill with cash."

"Hey, since when did anybody turn down cash? That steak done right?"

"Absolute perfection. Tastes of mesquite. Where do you find mesquite?"

Max shrugged modestly. "I got my suppliers. Truckers, they get everywhere." He nodded toward the window. "There goes a regular right now."

Everyone turned as a blast of passing air rattled the windows and something the size of the Queen Mary with wheels thundered through the intersection beyond the gravel parking lot.

"Wow!" said Steven softly. There was a faint smell of burned caramel in the air. It faded rapidly. "What was that?"

"Don’t know for sure," Max told him. "Can’t tell where everybody’s going or where they’re coming from. But a lot of em stop here." He was quiet for a long moment. "There is somethin you could offer that’d be better than money, though I’ll take that, too. Call it a tip."

"Like what?" Alicia asked hesitantly.

He looked down at her. "Personal contact. Oh, not what you’d call intimate. I simply want to touch you." Seeing the expressions on their faces he explained further. "Call it a hobby if you will, but one of the pleasures of running this place is knowing the folks you serve."

"This won’t hurt, will it?" Wendy asked him.

"No, little lady," he replied, laughing softly. "It won’t hurt at all."

Frank shrugged. "God knows you’ve earned a bigger tip than anything we could leave. If that’s what you want …." He stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you. I’m Frank Sonderberg."

"Just call me Max." The chef extended his own paw.

It was an ordinary handshake they exchanged, except for the faint lingering tingle Frank felt as he drew his fingers back. Without a second thought, Alicia extended her own hand.

"I’m Alicia."

"Charmed." Max turned her hand over and kissed the back.

Frank wondered if his wife felt more or less of the subsidiary tingling as a result.

Everyone shook his hand: the children, Flucca, then Begay. The chef’s eyes widened perceptibly as he gripped Burnfingers’s equally large hand. "Well, well: a Traveler."

"I get around. Hitchhike, mostly."

Max was just staring. "I’d like to talk with you at length."

"Be glad to, but I’m with these folks and they’re in kind of a hurry. Sorry."

"I understand." Max let the Indian’s fingers drop. For a split second, less than the blink of an eye, Frank thought he saw half a dozen steely green digits attached to the chef’s wrist. Or maybe they’d been silvery tentacles. Two localized hallucinations in less than a second. Before he had time to digest his eyes' deceptive information, Max’s hand was a normal hand once again.

"That’s the trouble with folks. They stop here for a fill-up and a quick bite to eat, and then they’re off again, sometimes for the last time." He turned to Mouse, extending his hand a final time.

She lifted her own tiny hand to meet his. Frank wasn’t sure exactly what happened next, but the first contact produced a bright blue flash and a crackling in the air. He nearly fell out of his chair. Wendy squealed and covered her face.

When he’d recovered from the shock, a cloud of blue smoke was already beginning to dissipate above the table. Their host was lying against the counter, legs spread, shaking his head like a man who’d just taken a solid uppercut. Mouse was standing by her chair, her eyes even wider than usual.

"I didn’t mean to do anything," she was saying over and over.

"It’s okay. It’s all right," Max told her. Eileen was leaning over the counter, staring at him and still chewing her gum.

The chef used one of the counter stools for support as he rose. Then he turned his gaze not on Mouse, but back on Frank. "You got any idea who you’re travelin' with, buddy?"

Frank stared at Mouse, who wore her usual enigmatic expression. "A musician?"

"Musician, yeah." Max wiped at his pants, straightened his apron, and chuckled. "Right: a musician." He inspected his hand, shaking it loosely from the wrist while supporting his elbow with his other hand. "Quite a handshake you got there, miss."

"Just call me Mouse."

"Miss Mouse, I haven’t had contact like that since" — he glanced back at his wife, who was looking on from behind the counter — "well, let’s just say it don’t happen often."

"You okay?" Even as he asked, Frank wondered what Mouse had done to the much bigger man. There’d been a spark, a ripping noise, and he’d been thrown across the floor as though he’d been shot from a cannon.

"Sure, I’m okay."

"I didn’t mean to do anything." Mouse was openly apologetic. "I’m usually very careful."

"You were careful," Max told her. "I should’ve mentioned that I’m an open receptor. Usually I just get a sip of everybody who comes through here. I wasn’t prepared for a deluge. Most folks don’t put out more than a trickle." He took a deep breath. "That’ll be a memory to savor. Thanks." He looked around the table. "You can thank the lady here for your meals. On the house."

"You sure?" Frank fumbled for his wallet. "You should let us pay you something. I still have to fill up."

"Go ahead."

"Then you have to take some money." He extracted several bills without bothering to check the denominations. "Here. Take this and give me whatever the change is."

Max frowned at the paper. "What’s that?"

"Money." Frank started to put it back in his wallet. "If it’s no good…"

"No, no. Currency? Let me see." Frank passed him the bills. "I’ll be damned. Eileen, have a look at this! You won’t believe it. Paper money. Intentionally transitory currency." He turned back to Frank. "You don’t often meet someone who comes from a society that makes a virtue of insubstantiality."

"Not all of it’s insubstantial," Frank protested. "We use coins, too. Metal."

"Oh, that stuff’s common." Max was examining the bills avidly. "Not even charged or bonded. Remarkable. Could I have one of each denomination? The images are so exquisitely bombastic."

"Well, sure," said Frank uncertainly. There was nothing in Max’s hand larger than a twenty.

"We’d best be going." Mouse was looking out the windows. "We’re losing time."

"Yeah." Frank took back the excess dollars.

"Wonderful," Max was murmuring. "Paper money."

His wife was filling sugar shakers. "See something new every day, doncha, honey? Listen, you folks ever come back this way, you be sure and stop in for coffee and danish or something, okay?"

"Sure," Frank told her, "if we ever come back this way."

Max was holding a ten up to the light. "Unbelievable. Such a feeble material for a unit of exchange." He blinked, followed Frank and the others as they headed for the door. "Kinda hard to see through, though. I’m supposed to get new lenses in a week or so."

Frank hesitated by the exit as his family filed outside. "I’m not sure I can handle those pumps. They look a little funny."

"Oh, you’ll find one that fits," Max assured him. "We monitor dispensing from in here. Just go ahead and fill 'er up. And remember next time you’re back this way: the Conjunction never closes."

"I’ll keep that in mind."

Frank followed his family across the gravel, staring through the intersection at the starry void on the other side. As Max had promised, hidden among nozzles with peculiar shapes and openings was one that closely resembled a standard gasoline filler. As he lifted it from its support hook the word UNLEADED appeared in glowing letters on the metal of the pump housing. There was no visible meter: no digital readout, no rotating numbers. He shrugged, flicked open the filler cap cover, removed the cap, and shoved the nozzle in as far as it would go before pulling on the trigger. Gas began to flow. It stank like ordinary unleaded.

As he filled the tank he watched his family climb inside. Mouse and Burnfingers waited till last.

"Do you know this place?" he asked suddenly. "What’s this Conjunction, anyway?"

Mouse paused on the steps. "I imagine it’s just what they say it is. A conjunction." She looked thoughtful. "A place where different strands of reality come together." She smiled and followed Alicia inside. Burnfingers winked at him.

"Think of it that way, anyhow."

"I’d rather not think of it at all." The pump clicked off, indicating the tank was full, and Frank slipped the nozzle back onto its hook. As he was securing it he found himself looking back toward the cafe. The continuously changing sign over the entrance was a blur of icons and glyphs and letters.

He thought he saw a figure standing by one window. It was eight feet tall, completely covered in a glistening bronze fur, and wore a white apron. As he stared, it extended coppery cables from one arm to lift a sugar shaker off a table. The shaker turned into a tiny glass hydrant full of blue bubbles. Frank shook his head, looked again. When his eyes refocused they saw something like an anemic bear wearing a florid turquoise jumpsuit. It was clutching an armful of purple popsicles.

He could have looked again but decided it might be bad for his eyesight. Not to mention his sanity. Instead, he worked his way around to the front of the motor home and concentrated on checking the oil and coolant levels. It was with difficulty and determination that he kept himself from turning again toward the cafe.

Back inside, he slid down into the driver’s chair and distastefully studied the gravel lot. Beyond it lay half a dozen ephemeral roadways bordered on all sides by impossible emptiness.

"Which way?"

"Back onto the road we were traversing," Mouse told him firmly. "That’s the way. That’s the path."

"Seems to me I’ve heard that before." With a sigh he started the engine and pulled out of the lot.

As they left the pumps behind, another vehicle pulled in behind them. It looked like a broken sequoia and went whisper-whisper as it settled to the ground beside the row of pumps. Out of it drifted eyes attached to a thin body and gossamer wings. It removed a black wire from a pump and stuck it into the tree trunk. The odor of rotten eggs and fried pineapple filled the air behind them.

Frank didn’t even breathe hard as they sailed off the sand onto the highway that stretched out into nothingness. At first he found it hard to concentrate on the road because he was constantly glancing at the rearview mirror. The Conjunction did not vanish abruptly, as if in a dream. Instead, it faded slowly like an ordinary roadside pullout, a bright beacon of light and friendship and consciousness. The last of it to disappear from view was the mysterious many-tongued illuminated sign, flashing its simple welcome to everyone and anyone, a cosmic lighthouse in the middle of the Great Abyss.

Sorry as he was to leave it behind, he felt better than he had in quite a while. The motor home’s tanks were full of honest gas and their bellies full of honest food. He wondered if he’d ever again enjoy so fine a meal served by such congenial hosts.

He drove for an hour, two, before the road ahead began to lighten. At Alicia’s shout everyone crowded forward.

They were leaving emptiness behind. Sky appeared and beneath it low hills covered with trees. Piles of dark volcanic rock formed gullies and arroyos on both sides of the road that shut out the void. They had arrived somewhere.

Not home, though. The rocks appeared normal enough but the trees were distorted parodies of healthy growths. Their branches twisted and curled in defiance of gravity, which was not so surprising since none of them were rooted in the earth. They floated just above the surface, their roots dangling in air. Nor were they fixed in place. Each moved with extreme slowness, propelled by the feathery waving of fine rootlets. Occasionally they bumped off each other like birds flying in slow motion.

As they stared, half a dozen fish came flying by. They were about a foot in diameter, black with silver stripes. As the motor home approached, they suddenly veered leftward, their fins and tails rippling as they vanished into the distance. Alicia’s eyes were wide and Frank clung grimly to the wheel. He had to because the roadway was rippling beneath them, having turned the consistency of taffy. Somehow the motor home clung to the surface, the wheels hanging on with deep tread instead of fingers. Or maybe the rubber had grown claws. Frank didn’t look because he was afraid of what he might see. And it was imperative they stay on the road. He firmly believed that if they wandered off the pavement, the motor home might start drifting like the incredible hovering fish, a steel bubble floating forever through an unstable reality.

Another school of larger fish swam lazily across the road in front of them. A family of little round heads atop bodiless legs scrambled into a protective gully. Frank thought he could hear them bleating as the motor home went past.

Whether benign or malevolent, at least every reality line they’d visited thus far had exhibited the familiar constants like air, gravity, and internal logic. It was the same in Pass Regulus as it had been in Hades or at the Conjunction. Now they found themselves on a line somewhere between reality and chaos, where the simplest laws of nature appeared to have been repealed.

"What kinda place is this?" Steven’s face was screwed into an expression of distaste and puzzlement.

"I am sure I don’t know." Mouse was as intrigued as any of them.

"Maybe we’ll get through it quickly." Alicia glanced hopefully at her husband, found no reassurance there. Unable to come up with any explanations for his own questions, he had none to spare for her.

They drove past a grove of upside-down trees. These balanced themselves on delicate branches, their roots hanging in the air like the hair of an old woman. They grew among rocky outcrops that drifted above grass, which in turn grew half an inch above the soil. A flock of raucous birds erupted from the ground beneath one tree, assembled briefly on its roots, then dove beak-first back into the earth.

"Too weird," Wendy muttered.

The engine chose that moment to sputter and miss. The motor home shuddered. Then the electronic ignition refired and they lurched forward.

Frank found he was sweating. If the engine died here they might never get it going again. In a place like this, where natural law seemed to be on a permanent vacation, a familiar internal combustion device might decide to start putting out ice cubes instead of heat. The word for this reality line was subversive.

"I’ve never been anyplace like this," Mouse was saying.

"I’ve never imagined anyplace like it." He kept resolutely to the pavement.

A tapping at his window brought his head around sharply. Three large angelfish drifted just beyond the glass, keeping pace without visible effort. He checked the speedometer, which read sixty. The fish in front was black with yellow stripes, while its companions were orange and white. The leader was tapping on the glass with a fin. Frank hesitated, then cracked the window a few inches. The fish drifted up to the gap.

"Pardon me," it said in perfect English, "but I don’t think I’ve seen you here before." Its fins rippled smoothly as it swam alongside.

"We’re just passing through." After all they’d experienced, it seemed almost normal to be conversing with a fish. If this variety fell in the water, he wondered, would it drown? "We’re on the right road, ain’t we?"

"You’re on the only road," the fish assured him. Silver-dollar-sized eyes pressed curiously against the glass.

"Peculiar creatures," opined one of the orange swimmers. "Strange habitat. Could we come inside? Just for a quick visit. We won’t stay long."

"I don’t know." Frank glanced back at Burnfingers.

"Some of my best friends are fish," came the reply. "Fishy, anyway."

Why the hell not? Frank wondered. He rolled the window down all the way.

Given their speed, the entering fish should have been accompanied by a stiff breeze, but there was no wind at all. They came in wiggling their fins. They poked curiously at everything and everyone, but they couldn’t do any harm because they had no hands.

"A nice shape," one of the orange visitors decided. "Next week it might be different, but right now it’s a nice shape."

"We’re very big on streamlining, you know," its companion declared. "It’s hard to be both elegant and streamlined."

"A machine," the other announced with satisfaction. It was poking at the stove like a bottom feeder hunting for worms. "We haven’t seen machines in — actually I can’t remember the last time I saw a machine. Or if I ever did."

"It’s nice to have visitors," said the first. "We don’t get many. This isn’t a very busy road."

"I can see why," said Frank fervently. "You might arrive looking like one thing and leave looking like something else. Or nothing else."

"It’s possible but not likely," said the black and yellow. "Just looking at you I can tell you’re all too tightly bonded for that. Your request self will never assert itself. At least not right away."

Frank was tempted to press a little harder on the accelerator but didn’t dare. The one thing they could not afford to do was lose control of the motor home. This was no place for reckless driving.

Flucca was keeping a wary eye on the floating fish as he spoke to Mouse. "Are you sure this isn’t Chaos?"

"Chaos?" The orange fish laughed, a bubbly, watery sound. "Goodness, no."

"Well, you don’t seem very organized here."

"Existence is wasteful without flexibility," the black fish told him. It made an effort to smile. "This isn’t Chaos. There are the Free Lands. Freedom is not Chaos, though there are similarities."

One of the orange floaters nodded. "Freedom is just Chaos with better lighting."

"It’s all in how you perceive reality." The black spun in a tight circle. "Best not to examine too closely the underlying truths. They can be upsetting. Speaking of which, you all are so nervous and uptight. Any stomach pains?"

"No," Alicia responded. "Actually I feel fine. It’s just that we’re in a hurry to get somewhere and these detours are kind of trying."

"No detours here, unless you want to take them." The orange fish were swimming toward the open window. The black hurried to join them. The unlikely trio exited together.

"Machines," one of them muttered disapprovingly.

"Wait, wait a second!" Frank waved anxiously. "How much farther does this road go?" There was no answer. The three angelfish were already falling behind as they swam in stately formation toward the floating mountains that dominated the distant horizon.

"Well," Alicia observed after some time had passed, "at least the natives are friendly."

"And maybe good to eat," said Burnfingers undiplomatically.

"I wonder what they look like when they’re not being fish?" Wendy mused.

"I don’t know." Frank kept his eyes resolutely on the road ahead. "But let’s not ask for any demonstrations. Uh-oh." He braked, disconnecting the cruise control. The motor home began to slow. Mouse moved up for a better look.

"What’s the matter?"

"Maybe it isn’t Chaos, but there’s a little too much freedom ahead."

They were coming to a split in the road. Not a fork or another off ramp. A hundred yards in front of the motor home, the pale pavement degenerated into a tangle of possible pathways. Some curved skyward at impossible angles. Others plunged into solid ground. A few curled round and round like endless corkscrews. If he drove onto one of those, Frank wondered, would he fall off when the road turned upside-down, or would they just keep on going?

In any case, he had no intention of plunging headlong into that mass of multidirectional spaghetti. There was no one in front of him, no one behind. He slowed, pulled off onto what he hoped was a paved shoulder, and stared.

"Did you ever see anything like that?"

"Sure. Lots of times," said Burnfingers. "On the reservation. Sheep guts." Behind him, Wendy made a face.

"How do I know which one to take? There aren’t any signs. Leastwise nothing I can read."

There were a good three dozen possible routes, provided one took into account suspension of certain natural laws. Objects floated around, over, and through several of the roadways. Some were even recognizable.

"We could ask the fish," Wendy suggested, "if they’d come back."

Her father looked to the side. A school of silvery shapes glided through the air half a mile distant. They showed no sign of moving closer.

"Maybe if we just wait," Alicia said hopefully, "someone will come along who can give us directions."

"Sure, and maybe we’ll all come apart like toys."

"Or turn into fish!" Only Steven was excited by the possibility. "I wanna be a tuna."

"You like to eat tuna," his mother reminded him gently, "but I don’t think you’d like to be one."

"I would if I could fly."

"Nobody’s flying anywhere," his father said sternly, "least of all in this motor home. This is our anchor, the one stable thing in this whole crazy place. Nobody turns into anything unless we all do so together." He looked at his wife. "I think you’re right, hon. I think we stay here until we can get or figure out directions, even if we have to ask an oak tree in Bermuda shorts."

But nothing much came by, certainly nothing likely to offer directions. Once a school of large sardines swam over the top of the motor home. They giggled ceaselessly while ignoring the bipedal entities trapped inside.

"Wish we hadn’t used up all the propane," Frank muttered as he nibbled on a sack of Doritos.

"We did not have much choice," Burnfingers reminded him. "We could not make a partial bomb. As for myself, I am enjoying the cold snack food. For a long time all the food I had to eat was hot."

"You think we’ll ever get out of here?" Flucca asked him.

"Of course we will." Burnfingers chewed on a pepperoni stick. "We have gotten out of every other place we’ve been."

"I wish I had your confidence." Frank stared morosely at the impossible interchange frustrating their progress.

"Don’t worry, sweetheart." Alicia patted his arm. "We’ll make it. Hand me that box of raisins if you’re finished, will you?"

"Sure." He complied, found she was eyeing him strangely. "Something wrong?"

"I don’t know."

"Then what are you staring at?"

"Your arm."

"What’s wrong with it?"

"Nothing, I guess. Except you used to have only two."

He frowned at her, then down at himself. A third arm had grown from one shoulder. He raised it, watched the fingers respond to mental commands with a mix of fascination and horror.

"The fish." Mouse was staring at him, too. "The fish said something about our request selves."

"That’s neat, Dad," said Steven. "Can you grow another one?"

"What are you talking about? I don’t know. I don’t want to." As he finished, a fourth arm emerged, then two more. He tested them all, wiggling the fingers, the arms bending and moving gracefully. "This could be handy, except when you needed a new shirt."

"You always were the grabby type," Alicia told him.

"Don’t get funny. What about you? If I’m gonna look ridiculous I don’t want to do it alone."

"All right." She closed her eyes and strained. Her arms did not multiply, but a faint pink aura appeared in the air surrounding her, a rose-hued mist. "I’m sorry," she said. "I guess I can’t do it."

"But you did something else," Mouse told her. "Try again."

Alicia took a deep breath and concentrated. Soon a tremendous feeling of health and well-being filled the motor home, wiping away fear and concern, relaxing them all, reassuring and warming. It radiated from Alicia, a pure femininity encompassing sensuality and maternal affection. Frank recognized it right away. He’d felt it before, only nowhere near as powerfully. It was one of the things that had first attracted him to his wife. She’d always had it. The difference here was that instead of concealing it within, she could let it spread outward like a bracing pink wave.

She slumped, blinking. "That felt good, even if I didn’t grow any extra arms."

"It made all of us feel good." Mouse was smiling. "That’s a very special ability, Alicia. Maybe more than roads intersect at this place."

"Hey, look at me, everybody!"

They all turned. Flucca stood in the middle of the motor home, gesturing excitedly. "Watch this." As they stared, two Fluccas ran toward each other and melted together, like a trick on television.

"Do that again," Burnfingers asked him.

"No problem." Snapping his fingers for effect, the dwarf executed a neat pirouette. One of him jumped left, the other to the right, and once more there were two of him. The first jumped on the second’s shoulders. Four stubby arms extended parallel to the floor.

"I always knew I was a normal-sized person. But there was only half of me in the real world."

"Maybe more than half," Burnfingers suggested. "Try it again."

"Really? You think so?" Both Fluccas spoke simultaneously. It was purer than stereo. Both snapped their fingers at the same time, jumped — and the back of the motor home was occupied by four very short Mexican chefs.

"That’s enough," said Frank. Looking at the four Fluccas hurt his head.

"The unending Niccolo." Burnfingers’s voice had fallen to a whisper. "I wonder how many of him there really are?"

"More than meets the eye, which is what I’ve been telling people for years." Like the cards in Alice in Wonderland, he jumped back together until only one of him stood before them. "Always was my own best company."

"What about you, Mouse?" It was Alicia who posed the query. "What can your secret self do?"

"I am a singer. I am a singer here, I was a singer in your reality, I would be a singer on any reality line. Nothing more or less."

Disappointed, Alicia looked past her. "Then what about you, Burnfingers?"

"I do not know." He peered back at Flucca. "What should I do? Snap my fingers, or turn a circle, or hold my breath?"

"Try and let your inner self emerge," Mouse told him. "I think that’s what the fish meant."

"All right. Hey-ah."

He stood up, smiling. A serious smile this time, not sappy or half-cocked. As they looked on, he began to grow. Slowly at first, then more rapidly. His head bumped the ceiling.

"Maybe I had better go outside."

"I dunno." Frank hurriedly checked the windows.

"The fish are not going to carry me away." He opened the door and stepped outside.

As he grew, his body diffused. The ground did not splinter under his weight. In minutes he was a thousand feet tall and several hundred wide. It was possible to see through his vapor-thin feet.

"That’s enough, Burnfingers!" Alicia had rolled down her window and leaned out to watch. Now she yelled worriedly. Frank crowded behind her while the children, Mouse, and Flucca spread themselves from the door to the rear windows.

A thin voice drifted down to them from up among the clouds. "I can’t stop. I cannot stop myself."

"You gotta stop!" Frank shouted.

"Please, Burnfingers! It’s not funny anymore!" Alicia screamed.

"It never was very funny." They couldn’t see his face anymore. "But it sure is enlightening."

Then he was gone. Or it seemed he was gone. They argued about it. Neither Frank nor Alicia could see anything, but Mouse insisted Burnfingers Begay was still standing there, his position unchanged.

Frank straightened. "I knew he shouldn’t have gone outside. I knew it. The only reality we’ve got left is in here. As soon as he went out, that was all she wrote. No more links with his own reality."

"He’s still there," said Mouse, disagreeing fervently.

"Yeah? Where?" Frank made a show of studying the terrain outside. "I don’t see him."

"He kept growing," she insisted. "As he grows, he becomes more spread out, until the atoms of his body are so far apart it’s the same as if he’s become transparent. Now he is an echo of a shadow of an outline."

"Solid like a brick," Frank muttered.

"Say, rather, less than an echo but more than a memory." She stood in the open doorway, staring at the strange land beyond.

"What do we do now?" There was sadness in Alicia’s voice. Though at first suspicious of him, she’d grown quite fond of Burnfingers Begay, and not only because he’d risked his life to help rescue her and her children from the mutants of a devastated Salt Lake City. She’d come to like him for himself.

"We stay here until we’re sure which road to try or until our food runs out, whichever comes first. That’s all I know how to do. Mouse?"

She didn’t reply, just kept staring out the open door.