To the Vanishing Point

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.

"What can I do?"

"Drive on," said one of the other fish.

Despite his fears Frank was more than happy to follow instructions for a change. For a second time the motor home burst clear of the Anarchis. As soon as they emerged he saw they were more than halfway across the plateau. Dark tendrils the size of trees were reaching for the three musicians performing perilously near the edge. Alicia’s self-confidence might hold it back for a moment or two, but no longer. Then they would find themselves enveloped, together with reality’s last hope.

Frank drove a little nearer oblivion than he would have preferred, but they needed the additional room. Already the Anarchis reached skyward, obscuring the cliffs from view and expanding to cover the entire plateau. As it advanced, the little yellow flowers closed up and grass wilted. The cloud of desperate hummingbirds and riders were forced into a steadily shrinking portion of plateau.

The door slammed. A moment later Steven appeared in front of the motor home. He climbed up on the front bumper and unlimbered the shining lariat.

Frank stared as his son whirled the rope over his head. It grew and grew until a sound like that of an approaching freight train filled the Winnebago. With a quite credible yee-haw! Steven let the immense loop fly at the oncoming wall of darkness. It settled neatly around the entire gigantic bulk.

As he began pulling it tight, the Anarchis let loose with a roar powerful enough to make worlds tremble. Steven began whistling, drawing in the loop like a deep-sea fisherman fighting a record marlin. He didn’t stop until the Anarchis had been compacted by the lariat, reduced to a cylinder of pure Chaos barely a couple of yards in diameter. It was as black and shiny as polished obsidian and it fought with a relentless, wild strength.

Steven used one hand to grip the radio aerial, wrapped the lariat twice around his wrist. "Let’s go, Dad!"

"Yes. Time to go," the angelfish chorused.

"Go? Go where?"

"Back the way you came." Another fish gestured with a fin. "Back to reality, which the Anarchis cannot stand. Back through the Vanishing Point."

Frank eased down the accelerator. "It’ll break free. He can’t hold it." His son stood on the bumper, clinging to rope and aerial as the motor home started forward. "It’s just one little rope."

"Little rope?" said an orange angelfish. "Don’t underestimate your son or his tools. His rope is a superstring."

"What the hell’s a superstring?"

"I forget how primitive is your reality line," said one of the other fish. "A superstring is little more than an atom wide, but it’s billions of light-years long. The gravitational strength it exerts is beyond your comprehension. All superstrings were formed during and are left over from the creation of the Cosmos. They’re very useful for tying things together. Some are even stronger than the Spinner’s reality lines. It takes someone very special to make use of them."

"Like you?" Flucca wondered.

"We have neither hands nor inclination. Your son has always had both."

"Cowboy," Frank murmured.

"Expert obulator," the third fish corrected him. "He’s been a fine pupil."

The Anarchis bellowed and thundered. It slammed into the canyon walls, sending rocks the size of skyscrapers flying. But it could not break the superstring. By this time Frank saw that the string itself was invisible. What they could see was the energy it radiated in the immediate visible spectrum. The silvery fluorescence he’d thought was the lariat itself was only its ghost.

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.

"What motor home?"

"Back up the canyon. About a mile back down the road."

The man frowned. "No canyon here. Just rock and cliffs." Then he smiled and shrugged. "None of my business nohow. But it too damn hot to be hitchhiking. I’m on my way in to work. Why don' you folks come aboard?"

"We’d appreciate a lift," said Steven.

"I’ll take you all to the hotel. You do what you want from there. Motor home, you say?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Didn’t know there were any motor homes for hire on the island, but that not my business neither."

"We’ll be glad to pay you for the ride," Frank told him as he climbed in.

"No way, frien'. I’m always picking up folks out this way. Not too many people realize how empty the back country is. Mostly they just stay in Hilo or one of the big resorts." He eased back out onto the highway.

"Daddy," Wendy whispered to her father, "we’re in Hawaii!"

Cars began to appear, not many, but enough to be reassuring. Frank felt like a moviegoer who’d spent a year inside a film, only to finally have climbed back down off the screen to resume his seat in the real world. He leaned against the bench seat.

"Burnfingers, how about giving us a tune?"

"Sure, my friend." The Navajo extracted his flute, set it against his lips, and began playing. It was an invigorating song, alive with jaunty triumph. A thousand trumpets playing fanfare at a royal coronation could not have been more thrilling.

In a few minutes they were all singing or humming along, including the driver. Off in the distance the world’s tallest active volcano, Mauna Loa, smoked threateningly but otherwise behaved itself.

Frank found himself watching the waves that broke against the rocky shore. It was a rhythm he recognized, the rhythm of the Spinner. His heart kept time with the waters, all entwined with the breeze whipping past the speeding van, with the pattern of the volcano’s breath fashioned in the clear blue sky. All were part of one and the same thing: volcano, heartbeat, wind, and wave. One world, one reality, one song.

Probably Mouse could have put it better, could have explained what it all meant, but she was on her way elsewhere. Home, or to another demand on her special talents. A singer she’d called herself, and a singer she was, though on a scale no words existed to describe.

In spite of everything it had cost him, he found that he was glad he’d been invited to the concert.