Freak City Read online

  Chapter Eight

  Argus had promised Ahmed that he would indeed take the package to Madam Sylvia, and since Ahmed had given him the morning off - with pay - to do just that, he did just that the next morning. First he armed himself with a worthless paperback book called 'What To Worry About And How', just in case the treacherous Karly and Kansas were lying in wait for him at the corner. They were, and they took the bait, sneaking up from behind him and snatching the book right out of his hand, then shooting off around the corner, where they hid for who knows how long because he didn't chase after them at all. Instead, he crossed the street, took the package out from under his jacket where he'd been hiding it, and entered Madam Sylvia's psychic storefront.

  Sylvia had been in business at that very location for many, many years, and yet it seemed she never aged. She could hardly have been more than thirty. Old-timers were convinced she was actually over a hundred, but kept her youthful appearance due to some very evil magic. They were convinced that babies' blood had been involved at some point. Sylvia herself chalked it up to genetics. After all, her mother had lived to be ninety and even until the end never looked any older than sixty, sixty one. In fact, she had inherited the business from her mother, who was also named Madam Sylvia, so it was natural for people to think she had been there forever.

  The little shop was exactly as you imagine it to be, for precisely that reason. When you go to a psychic, you expect certain things. Crystal balls, tarot cards, incense, red velvet drapes, and so on. The Madams Sylvia lair was not lacking in any of these finishing touches. Sylvia herself would have preferred something more like a psychiatrist's office, with prints of famous paintings and understated wallpaper, but she understood her market and her clientele. If it's hokey they want, it's hokey they'll get, she sighed.

  Business was never slow, another fact that continually surprised her. It was understandable that people are afraid of the unknown, and the future is by definition - or at least by our common experience - unknown, although she understood that from the vantage point of the general theory of relativity, the future might be perceived to be simultaneous with all other points in time depending on your location and velocity within the space time continuum. Science, and especially quantum mechanics, had helped her understand her own particular talents.

  She even had a master's degree in astrophysics from the University of Leeds. The truth of the matter was that she was indeed psychic. The future was not an unknown to her eyes. It was instead a rather dreadful bore. Just as you or I can predict the destination of one ant moving along in a trail of ants, even though the ant itself might have no idea where it's going, so it was with Sylvia and the vast majority of her customers. They presented their futures to her as plainly as the noses on their faces. She had never been married. She had considered it once.

  She had let herself feel that she had fallen in love with a cashier from a neighborhood bookstore. He had visions of a soft and gentle future, settling down as the owner of a cozy little store in a small touristy town, living on postcards, trinkets and mysteries, while she had her own little office in a little back room if only to keep her occupied and content. She had to admit that she almost went through with it, but there was always the problem of her mom.

  Dead as she was, the old Madam Sylvia would not go away, appearing to her daughter practically daily, butting right into her business. She was liable to show up any time, day or night, and start right in with complaining. There was way too much noise. It was too quiet. Too cold or too hot. The dead are never comfy it seemed. She always wore that old blue dress. The one she was married in. The one she was buried in too. She would stand in the corner by the potted palm, and talk louder and louder until she was sure she was heard.

  Mama Sylvia made such a fuss over the quiet cashier, pestering her daughter about his dirty little habits, describing the horrible children they would certainly have, and generally making such a nuisance of herself that the only way the younger one could get her to stop bothering her was to make a deal. For her part she promised she would not marry the boy. In return her mother was only allowed to badger her on weekends, Saturdays between seven and nine in the morning, to be precise. Sylvia never regretted the deal, and she didn't bother to tell her mother that she was never going to go through with it anyway. She also never told her that the dead are lousy fortune tellers.

  Argus didn't have to wait long in the gaudy and predictable waiting room. Sylvia had been expecting him, and soon ushered him into the main chamber. She had him sit down across the small round black-draped table and studied his face for a few moments in silence. Argus was holding the package in his lap but was waiting for her to speak first.

  "Something happened to you,” she finally said. Argus looked puzzled and didn't reply.

  "When you were a small child,” Sylvia said. "Something unusual happened to you, but you don't know what it was, do you?" Argus shook his head.

  "No,” she nodded, "you don't even remember.” She paused and was silent again for awhile. "Listen to me,” she continued. "You have been touched by the infinite. Do you know what that means?"

  Again, he was at a loss for words. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  "Try to remember,” she went on. "It was ... well, I cannot say exactly what it was, but you have been marked."

  "My brother says I almost drowned when I was two,” he suggested, but Sylvia shook his head.

  "There is nothing of the infinite about death,” she replied, muttering more to herself than to him.

  "Nothing could be less so. This was more like the opposite,” she whispered.

  "I cannot say exactly,” she repeated, more loudly. "Anyway, you have brought me something to look at, I believe." Argus put the package on the table, and began to tell her about it but she raised her hand to silence him.

  "I know all about it,” she said. "Our friend Ahmed has already told me your story. Now, let me take a look at the objects.”

  Argus watched in silence as she unwrapped the items - for he had put them back together as they had originally appeared - and set them on the table very carefully. While she was doing so she kept murmuring to herself, words that sounded like "nonsense" and "silly" and "really, now.”

  "You know of course that these are just clues,” she looked up and told him. "It's a riddle, a puzzle."

  "We've guessed that much already,” he agreed.

  "We?" she said quizically. "Yes, of course, you have friends."

  "Not really friends,” Argus said, and immediately he wondered why he'd said that. He wanted them to be his friends, all of them. Why am I so afraid? he asked himself. He always assumed that no one would like him, that he could never be good enough to even be somebody's friend. Why do I have this idea? he wondered.

  "A pattern that leads up to something,” she said, "or maybe not some thing, but some where and some when. Yes, all of it leads up to a place and a time. You will figure it out, but the time will be soon."

  "Yes,” he replied. "My birthday is in less than two weeks, and according to the pattern, that's when it - whatever it is - is supposed to happen."

  "You will figure it out,” she continued, holding up one of the robots. "Of course, some of these clues are more cryptic than others."

  "Do you know?" he asked her. "Can you tell me what it's all about?"

  "No,” she declared abruptly, and began carelessly stuffing the items back into the box. "I can tell you no more, except maybe this." She stopped, holding up the newspaper book review.

  "Don't bother reading that book. It is crap,” and she laughed as she put it away in the package.

  "There is no witchcraft,” Sylvia said, "not of positive thinking or anything else. Witchcraft is bull. Forget about that. Just follow the clues if you can"

  "Thanks,” Argus said, feeling dejected. This had been no use at all. He stood and picked up the package, sticking it back in his jacket so the kids couldn't get to it.

  "Tr
y to remember,” Sylvia called after him as he started walking away. "Ask your family about it"

  "I don't have a family,” he replied, not turning around, "not one that matters in any case."

  "Try to remember,” she repeated more loudly as he walked out the door and closed it behind him. Yeah, I'll try to remember, he said to himself, remember a life where nothing happened ever, not to me, not to anyone, ever. When he crossed the street, Kansas and Karly were standing there pouting, holding out the stupid book they'd stolen from him earlier, trying to taunt him to chase them, but he just waved them away and went in to work.