The concrete walkway that bordered the front of the motel led him to a deep arroyo, which cut through forested land. A small creek gleamed like silver ribbon at the bottom, coursing toward the culvert that would lead it beneath the road. Abandoning the walkway at its terminus he followed the running water into the pines.
As long as he watched where he put his feet, the three-quarters-full moon provided ample light to walk by. Pine needles and leaves from other growths formed a stale carpet that crunched underfoot. Trees made a wall that soon obliterated the motel from sight.
There were no houses here at this end of town. Conscious of his increasing solitude, he would have turned back if the song had not continued to grow louder. It hung in the air between the trees, hypnotic and insistent.
A petite form appeared in the moonlight, standing by the water where the creek slowed and broadened to create a small pond. Silken tresses and folds of silk fluttered auralike around it, despite the absence of a breeze. As he drew close, a gentle wind sprang from the earth itself, curling about him. It was as if he were undergoing inspection by a ghost.
Head tilted back, the figure was singing to the sky. Stars of especial brightness twinkled through the atmosphere as though responding to that song, as if replying with light via some mysterious stellar Morse code.
She sensed his approach, or heard his footsteps compressing the forest detritus, because she stopped and turned to look straight at him. The silenced song hung in the night air like a physical presence.
"Be careful here, Frank Sonderberg."
"Mouse, what are you doing out here? I mean, you’re singing: I can see that. But I thought you needed to save your voice for the Spinner?"
She smiled understandingly. "Sometimes I simply have to sing, regardless of other considerations. It’s like breathing to me. It relaxes me and keeps me whole." As he continued toward her she put up a warning hand. "Truly be careful, Frank, or you will fall."
A yard away from her he halted, grinning in the weak light. "Where? The creek?" He gestured to his right. "Not much of a tumble."
"Not into the creek." Her head cocked sideways and those enormous violet eyes shone like amethysts. "Are you a brave man, Frank Sonderberg? Do you have real courage?"
After all they’d been through recently he thought it was an unnecessary question, but he answered anyway. "Depends how you define brave, I guess. I’ve made it this far. I built up a nearly nationwide business on guts and determination, and I’ve never avoided a challenge. Never had to shoot anybody or anything, but I think I could if I had to."
"Weapons do not make a man brave. True bravery is here" — she touched a finger to her head — "and here." She repeated the same gesture, this time touching her hand to her chest above her heart. "Are you afraid of heights?"
"No more or less so than the average guy, I guess. Why?" Off to his right the creek rang like water from a dripping faucet. He doubted it was more than six feet deep.
"Not there," she told him. She appeared to hesitate for a moment, then turned and gestured. "Here. But watch your footing. If you slip I’m not strong enough to catch you."
"I’ll be careful." He tried to stand a little taller and keep his gut sucked in, always a strain and one that grew worse each year. In a moment he was standing alongside her. Though only of average height he towered above her slight form.
The wind was much stronger now. He turned away from her and looked toward his feet.
Six inches in front of his toes the earth vanished, along with the trees, mountains, and moonlight. A few incredibly distant objects fought vainly against the void, though what those minuscule pinpricks of light might be he could not tell. It was emptier than the night through which they’d driven to reach this place, an unholy abyss hard by his left foot.
He inhaled sharply. His brain screamed at him to step back from that awful infinity, but mindful of Mouse’s words he was determined to hold his ground. As he felt her left hand on his arm he knew what she’d said was true: if he fell she wouldn’t be able to drag him back. In spite of that her touch was immeasurably reassuring, the fingers warm on his bare skin.
"There are a few places where reality simply ends. Not just in this world but in every world. Places where nothing is, not even Chaos. The congruent void. This is one of those places. A dangerous place to stand, but an exhilarating spot to sing."
Frank wasn’t afraid of falling anymore, perhaps because he was frozen to the spot. Astonishing how the utter and complete absence of anything could be so fascinating.
"When I was a kid we used to dare each other to walk to the edge of a roof at school and step off." He slipped another inch forward and felt her fingers tighten on his arm.
"This is no place for childhood pranks," she warned him. "If you step off this soil you will never stop falling. You’ll never hit bottom because there is no bottom. You will just keep falling and falling until you perish of thirst or hunger or fear."
"What the hell. It’s just like the second floor at Whitney Elementary. The only thing that’s different is the scale."
Breathing fast, feeling the excitement course through him, he raised his left leg and stretched it out over emptiness. Then he lowered it, lowered it until his foot passed beneath the level of the ground on which he stood. As his right leg started to tremble, he stepped back. At the same time the tension in her fingers eased.
"That was a foolish thing to do, Frank."
He shrugged, inordinately pleased with himself. "We’re a foolish people. Besides, if you don’t do something a little crazy once in a while, life gets pretty damn stale. How many people can say they’ve stepped over the edge of the world? Wonder what Columbus’s boys would’ve made of this. Maybe some of those old sailors were right all along."
She shook her head but couldn’t keep herself from smiling. "Haven’t you done enough crazy things recently to last you a lifetime?"
"Those weren’t by choice. This was. You got to be in control to enjoy the craziness. Like in business." He looked behind him. The void was still there, threatening and infinite as before, however briefly conquered. "Call it juvenile if you want, but that felt pretty good."
"It was foolish. It was also a very brave thing for an ordinary man to try."
He was feeling slightly giddy and not a little wild. "Maybe I ain’t as ordinary as you think. Wasn’t I the one who stopped to pick you up?"
"That’s so. Perhaps more than coincidence was at work."
He chuckled. "Don’t get heavy on me. I’m just babbling. You ain’t one of those folks who believes that everything’s predetermined, are you? That we have no free will?"
"I believe," she replied evenly, "that certain deliberate confluences of people and places are possible." She’d moved closer to him. So near, her eyes were larger even than the void behind them. She smelled of faraway places and exotic ephemera.
There was something he couldn’t define. He recalled her impossible claim of age. Certainly she was older than she looked. Five, maybe ten years. Not centuries. Not millennia. He didn’t feel he was in the presence of an old woman. Quite the contrary.
Good God, she’s beautiful, he found himself thinking. Not in the fashion of the aspiring actresses he sometimes encountered in Los Angeles, nor in the classic sense of the portraits that hung on art museum walls. Like her silken dress, a kind of timeless elegance clung to her.
He discovered he was more nervous than he’d been when he’d suspended his leg over the edge of the world. He was more afraid of falling now, though it was an entirely different kind of falling that endangered him.
"Could you quit staring at me like that?"
Her gaze did not shift. "Why? Do I make you uneasy?"
"Uneasy, hell. You’re driving me nuts, and you know it. This is crazy. I mean, I probably am just an ordinary guy like you said. The top of my head already reflects too much light, I’m twenty pounds overweight, and the only special talent or ability I’ve got is for making money, which is no bi
g deal where I come from."
"There is more than that," she whispered huskily, "even if you refuse to recognize it yourself. You are kind. You have a stubbornness in you that translates into bravery. You are full of love for your family and your fellow man."
"Maybe so, except for Oshmans," he said, naming his major competitor.
His attempt to make light of her deadly serious comments had no effect on her. She put her arms around his waist. "It’s easy to be brave when one is young and strong, much more difficult when one is not. Therein lies real courage."
"I told you, I’m not brave. I just like to do crazy stuff once in a while."
The evening chill had deserted them. It was downright hot there by the pond at the edge of the world. Despite all her denials she seemed to have considerable strength in those slim arms. Enough to pull him down toward her. Or maybe he bent. He was never sure.
The heat that seared him as they kissed awoke feelings and sensations dormant for twenty years. He found himself kissing back, unwilling to break the contact even though another part of him screamed for him to stop. She wouldn’t let him back away and, he had to admit, he didn’t struggle very hard.
When she finally pulled away, his whole body was on fire. She still wore that strange enigmatic smile as her hands slid away from his neck and the back of his head.
"Look," he told her, having to fight to find his voice, "I’ve never cheated on Alicia. Well, once, but that was a long time ago."
"Life is short," she whispered.
"Not according to you it ain’t. Of course, that was just a gag. Nothing lives that long. Maybe stars and sequoias and stuff. But not people." The fire was beginning to fade. He wanted it to linger and to leave. It had been much more than a natural kiss, much more. The brief, complete merging of two disparate individuals, a physical excuse for contact on a much deeper level.
"What did you do to me?"
"I kissed you."
"No. You did something else, something more."
"Only a kiss. Anything else you felt lay within you all the time. All I did was help you to unlock yourself. I am a key. I knew it would be worth it.
"The beautiful, the handsome people who bestride your world in awe of their own genetic good fortune are often dull and passionless, while those who do not match the artificial cultural ideal, who may be heavy or short, thin or dark, too light or too tall or too something, may have all manner of wondrous feelings bottled up inside them. Often they refuse to acknowledge their own potential. They are unable to recognize their true selves."
He was shaking his head. "That couldn’t have been my true self. Not good ol' Frank Percival Sonderberg."
"Why do you deny yourself? Why do you think you’ve been so successful at what you’ve tried?" She was chiding him the way she would a child. "You have achieved great things. There is greatness in all accomplishment. It’s not necessary to write great music or draw beautiful pictures, to discover new medicines or plumb ocean depths to achieve, to accomplish. You have overcome your own limitations and have excelled. Only the direction you’ve chosen is different. That does not reduce you in stature. Visibility and popularity are not signs of greatness as often as they are of simply being loud. They are more often the signature of vulgarity rather than achievement. It is what we do with ourselves that makes us great, not the value others place on those doings.
"You possess hidden resources, Frank. Most people do, but yours run deeper than most. I had to find out what kind of man you are."
"And did I pass the test, teacher?" Despite his flippancy he was intensely interested in her reply.
She hesitated, thinking. Then the most marvelous expression came over her face, as though her entire body was smiling. It lit up the night and spilled over into the great abyss.
"You’ll do."
He swallowed, then stepped past her, suddenly wanting to be away from the edge of the world. When he stopped and turned, the void had disappeared. There was only the moonlight shafting down between the trees and the distant shadowy ramparts of the mountains. He wondered if the void would reappear if he retraced his steps.
"I don’t know what I’ll do for," he said apologetically, "but while a lot of me screams to do otherwise, I’m afraid I won’t do for you. See, I love Alicia. She’s not as pretty as some and she’s not as bright as some and she’s probably not several other things as much as some, but then neither am I. So we make a pretty good match. We’re comfortable with each other.
"You talked about merging. Maybe it’s not the same kind of merging we just did, but Alicia and I merge on a lot of other levels. Pretty tight. So I’m sorry. If it’s comfort you’re looking for, why don’t you try Burnfingers Begay? I’m sure he’d be happy to oblige."
She shook her head slowly. "I could never make love to a crazy man."
"You believe he’s nuts?"
"He admits to it. Who am I to argue with him? Burnfingers Begay is a wondrous person I have yet to figure out. He is too much of a mystery for me to be intimate with. I prefer my love predictable."
She came toward him and he nearly panicked and ran. Because he knew that in spite of everything he’d said, if she kissed him like that a second time he wouldn’t be able to resist, wouldn’t want to resist.
"Burnfingers’s spirit is pure and unencumbered by guilt. It’s amazing to encounter someone like that in your corrupted world. I think maybe he’s a yeibichai."
"A what?" They were making their way back through the trees, following the cheerful creek toward the motel.
"A Navajo spirit. What kind, I don’t know."
"Come on. I mean, I know I just stepped over the edge of the world, but a spirit? Begay’s about the solidest-looking spirit I ever saw."
"You may be right. Perhaps he is only a man. A smart crazy man can fool people into thinking peculiar things. I am perceptive, but not perfect." She put her hand back on his arm, circling it through the crook of his elbow. "You cannot fly home to your Los Angeles, Frank."
"Don’t tell me stuff like that. Please. I’ve just about reached my limit."
"Your limit is greater than you know. I’m sure of that now. I can only tell you no matter how painful you may find the hearing of it that if you try to leave me now you’ll never see your home, your reality, again. You’ve come too far. Now I am your only link to that reality. You cannot abandon me any more than I can go on without you. I cannot prevent you from so doing, however."
"Yeah, yeah." He sighed heavily. "I guess I’m stuck with you. Got no choice, right? It’s like Russian roulette. I can go ahead and pull the trigger, but if I guess wrong I don’t get a second try."
"I’m afraid so. If you leave me and try to drive or fly home you might just make it. Or you might slip onto another thread of reality. Then I would never be able to find you again. You and your lovely Alicia would be lost forever."
"From here on it’s all or nothing, is that it?"
She nodded. "You’ve crossed too many boundaries, jumped too many lines. There’s no going back now until we reach the Vanishing Point."
"Which is somewhere between here and Wyoming, right?"
"As you would define it, yes. You’re going to have to take me all the way."
"Just so long as you don’t expect me to go all the way."
She smiled up at him. "You see? Only a truly brave man would be able to joke about something so serious."
"Yeah. Or else I’m crazier than Burnfingers Begay. Knowing you’re in deep shit doesn’t make you brave. Just realistic."
"I know it pleases you to demean yourself because you think of yourself as unattractive and not as intelligent as some. You do yourself repeated injustices, Frank." She took both of his hands in hers and squeezed tightly. "You must take me all the way to the Vanishing Point."
"What about my wife and kids? They ain’t truly brave, or whatever it is you’re convinced I am."
"For that, I sorrow. I wish it were otherwise because of the great danger. I know how concern for
their welfare preys upon your thoughts. Sadly, we have come this far together and so must continue to the end together. Console yourself in the knowledge that when the Spinner is soothed, reality will stabilize and you will be returned to a world no longer in danger of coming apart around you."
"Good thing I’m not paranoid or I wouldn’t be able to handle any of this." She freed his hands. They burned from the contact, as his lips still burned. "When we get to this Spinner I’m gonna have some choice words for it. What business does it have screwing up reality, anyway?"
"It is not a purposeful thing. Not even the Spinner is immune to illness and unhappiness."
"I hope we hit it off well. What’s it like, anyway? I know quite a bit about spinning. My stores only stock top-quality stuff. Jogging suits, sweat socks, uniforms, like that. Is the fabric of reality natural like cotton, or artificial like polyester?"
That made her laugh softly, as it was intended she should. It faded rapidly. When she spoke again it was in deadly earnest.
"The Anarchis will stop at nothing to prevent me from soothing the Spinner and realigning the fabric of existence. By now all the evil on every reality line will be watching and waiting, hoping to be the one that interrupts our journey. Evil thrives where Chaos reigns, remember, and nothing could do more to stimulate its expansion than the unraveling of order. Goodness requires the presence of stability, logic, and reason to do its work."
Frank considered thoughtfully. "You think maybe our little detours have been less than accidental?"
"It’s difficult to say. My being marooned in the desert for so long before you stopped to pick me up was an unlikely happenstance, as was your subsequent shunting to Hell. As for our detour to Pass Regulus, only Burnfingers Begay’s driving helped us escape from there."
Frank stepped around a tree. He ought to be exhausted, but there was no dozing in Mouse’s presence. Not when she was keyed up like this. She exuded enough energy and sense of purpose to keep an army awake.
We’re all the army she’s got, he told himself. Myself, Alicia, and the kids, and one crazy Comajo. Or maybe Burnfingers would prefer Navamanche.
To the Vanishing Point Page 19