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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,
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it was running smoothly again.
The terrain was a patchwork: emerald outcrops of dense vegetation consisting
of palms, ferns, and brilliant flowers alternating with barren fields of rough
dark lava. As the road crossed a narrow spit that extended out into the ocean,
they came into view of a towering active volcano. It reminded
Frank too much of the first stop on their odyssey through alternate realities.
Mouse's reaction was very different. "The place!" she declared excitedly. "The
marker. The smoking harbinger. Very soon now, very soon." She was standing
between his seat and Alicia's, staring intently forward.
Soon they were driving along a thin strip of road with ocean on one side and
sheer cliffs on the other. Rocks lying in the road kept Frank glancing
nervously at the plant-choked wall of stone on their left. The road had been
sliced from the sheer rock at great expense, yet no one seemed to use it.
Since leaving the beach they hadn't seen another vehicle, another sign of
life.
"Wherever we're going we'd better get there soon," he muttered. "I
don't know how it's lasted this long, but we've about run out." He indicated
the fuel gauge. The digital readout rested on empty. "We're down to emergency
gas, if there is any. Must be, because we're still goin'."
"There! Turn there!"
It threw Frank for a moment because it was so rare that Mouse shouted.
He hit the brakes harder than was necessary, then crept forward until they
reached the turnoff she'd indicated.
The steep, narrow dirt track occupied a cleft in the rocks. Concealed as it
was by thick ferns and other growths, it was all but invisible from the main
road. He would have driven past it a hundred times without suspecting its
presence. Reluctantly, he turned into the opening. It was barely wide enough
to admit the motor home. Occasionally the metal sides scraped rock.
Tropical flora closed in around them. It was as if they were traveling down a
long, green tunnel. At times the ferns packing the open space in search of
scarce sunlight were so thick they completely blocked the windshield. Frank
had to drive slowly and by feel, praying there were no sharp dips or
unexpected bends or drop-offs ahead. Soon the road itself disappeared. They
continued to advance up the streambed, which had cut the canyon. A trickle of
water ran down the center, disappearing between their wheels and reemerging in
their wake.
After half an hour of driving across terrain that the motor home had
never been designed to handle, the tunnel opened onto a much wider but equally
steep-sided canyon.
Walls of volcanic rock towered hundreds of feet above the canyon floor.
In places they were nearly vertical. Everywhere was dense vegetation. It
looked like films Frank had seen of New Guinea or the South Pacific, though
there was no reason to believe they were anywhere in either vicinity, or even
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