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peaceful and calm inside the motor home.
Alicia held both arms across her chest as she stared silently forward.
Wendy was still sobbing fitfully in back but was beginning to regain some
self-control. Her little brother just crouched motionless against the couch,
watching their guest.
"What the hell were those?" Frank drove mechanically, afraid to slow down,
unwilling to release his convulsive grip on the wheel. "What the hell is going
on?"
"This isn't happening." Alicia's voice was very small. She was shaking her
head slowly from side to side. "It isn't happening. It's all a dream."
"Not a dream." Mouse came toward them. "I'm sorry. For your sakes, I
wish it was."
Frank noticed that she kept her balance no matter how severely the motor home
leaned or swayed. She kept her balance, and he'd kept control. He sat a little
straighter. Plenty of guys would've panicked back there, would've let go of
the wheel or pulled over and run screaming into the desert. He'd held together
better than a lot of would-be heroes in the face of unexpected, unimaginable
horror. Alicia'd always told him he responded well in a crisis, like that time
her mother had been visiting and had suffered the bad heart attack. Five
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minutes from now he might go completely to pieces, but for the moment he was
fine.
Better try to find out what was happening now, then.
"Who are you? Nothing's been right ever since we picked you up. Has the world
gone nuts, or have we?"
She sighed. "I am very much afraid you are all still sane. Madness would make
it easier for you to cope. As we strive constantly to hold back the
madness, we are concurrently forbidden the luxury of descending into
insanity." Vast lavender orbs gazed directly into his eyes. They held nothing
back, and concealed everything.
The last vestiges of hysteria had faded from his voice. "While you were
sleeping in the back we stopped for some gas. The guy at the station was,
well, 'weird' would be an understatement. He did a lot of sniffing around the
motor home. I mean really sniffing, like a bloodhound or something. As we were
getting ready to leave he asked me if we'd seen or picked up any hitchhikers.
I thought that was a real peculiar thing to ask, just out of the blue like
that."
"And you didn't tell him."
"No. Now I'm not so sure I should've lied. What have we gotten ourselves into
by giving you a lift, Mouse? Or Moscohotcha, or whatever your name is? Who are
you, and what's going on, and why do I have this funny feeling this 'Vanishing
Point' of yours isn't a nightclub? Dammit, you owe us some straight answers!"
"Nightclub?" She looked puzzled. "I never said anything about a nightclub."
"You haven't said anything about anything. Business partner of mine once said
that in the absence of information it was natural for people to speculate. So
we've been doing a lot of speculating. Me, I'm fresh out of speculations. I
don't understand those rat-things that attacked us and I don't understand that
attendant and I especially don't understand you."
"I am..." she began, then stopped and started again. "It has to do with
Chaos."
Frank turned back to stare at the unwinding ribbon of highway, growled, "Oh,
well, that explains everything."
"Try to understand what I am going to say to you," she continued anxiously.
"There is a problem with the Spinner. The One Who Spins. Who
Modulates."
"Spins what?" Wendy had come forward to listen. She was frightened and
exhilarated and scared and exultant all at once. Mouse turned to smile at her.
Though the difference in their ages did not appear great, Wendy was conscious
of an immense gap between them. For some reason it didn't intimidate her.
"The fabric of existence." Mouse plucked at her rainbow sari dress.
"This stuff, only new. This is fashioned of old existence; forgotten memories
and lost history. Places that were but are no longer. Thoughts no longer
vital. I wear the echoes of what was once. The Spinner weaves the threads of
what is and will be.
"Therein lies the trouble. Almost always the Spinner spins smoothly and
without interruption. Only very, very rarely does it suffer distress. When
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