The grade was as steep as the one they’d descended when leaving Los Angeles but the motor home climbed with all the agility of a four-wheel drive. Several hours passed before Wendy let out a shout.
"Dad, turn the lights off! It’s getting light outside!"
Sure enough, the blackness through which they’d traveled for days was giving way to a velvety purple color. Soon brightly hued schools of tropical fish were swimming around them, darting for cover among rocks and coral as the motor home advanced.
Paradoxically, Frank found he was more nervous now than he’d been at any time since leaving Los Angeles They’d come a long way under unbelievable circumstances. But if anything went wrong now they could drown just as easily twenty feet beneath the surface as two miles down.
He was worrying needlessly. The motor home continued to ascend into water clear as crystal. Doubly gratifying was the fact that all the fish looked normal. They saw no mutants, no bizarre shapes, no twisted bodies. Only color and form.
They had to drive for a while before they found a break in the jagged reef. Once beyond the coral wall, the surface hung placidly only a few feet above them. The radio antenna broke through, leaving a small wake behind it as they advanced. Frank found himself driving across a gentle bottom paved with white sand.
Come on, he found himself urging the motor home. Just a little farther. Another couple hundred yards and we can breathe free again. A little longer and we’ll be there.
Be where? he asked himself. Be where, beware. He found he could smile, however grim the humor of it, now that the pressure induced by their abyssal excursion was almost gone. What strange territory had they reached after days of hard driving? Would this land prove as blasted and doomed as the Los Angeles they’d fled? Or would it be as peaceful and normal as the coral and fish surrounding them?
They began to emerge from the sea, waiting tensely as the water fell first below the level of the windshield, then past the hood, and finally to the tires. Frank drove out onto a wide crescent beach. Dry sand slowed the motor home no more than had the abyssal muck. Reality, he’d long since concluded, was a wonderful accessory to have on a long trip.
There was a gap in the line of palm trees that fringed the beach. He didn’t need Mouse to point the way. The opening revealed a paved highway two lanes wide. A faded, intermittent yellow stripe ran down the middle.
It was getting hot, but he held off activating the air-conditioning. The gas gauge was hovering perilously near empty.
Alicia rose abruptly and marched toward the door. "I’m going outside."
He rose and caught her before she was halfway to the exit. "No way. We don’t know what’s out there."
"It should be safe enough." Both of them turned to Mouse. Her eyes were open wide now, lavender beacons. "We’re free of the water and back on the right reality line. Your own — or one barely distinguishable from it."
"Barely?" Frank clung to his doubts. "That’s what you said about the one we just fled."
Flucca was standing by the door. "I’ll go first, if you like."
"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.