“It’s good,” Matty said.
The drinks came. Matty’s was some kind of white slushy with a huge slice of pineapple riding the side of the glass. He sipped at it through the straw and felt the tingle of incipient head freeze. Or maybe it was the alcohol. Matty had no idea what was in the drink, or what it would do to him. He’d only smoked pot.
Grandpa waved at someone at the door. “And here’s my pal now.”
G. Randall Archibald strode across the room. “Mai tai, my dearest Patricia! And a platter of calamari!” He slapped Matty on the shoulder. “What a performance! We should go on the road!”
Matty was so confused. Archibald shook hands with Grandpa Teddy and plopped down in a seat. “Whew!”
“So Smalls bought it?” Grandpa asked.
“Literally. He’s planning on big orders. Once he got over the disappointment over losing Matty, he realized the defense possibilities. The micro-lepton gun is the greatest weapon ever created to combat psi-spies, foreign and domestic!”
Matty couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was as if Hitler had sat down at the table with them, and Grandpa was asking about the weather in Berlin.
“So he’s in, then,” Grandpa said, and he couldn’t hold back a grin.
“In? He’s already talking RFPs, taking the gun straight to the military,” Archibald said. “He’s fired up to get us a contract, no matter if Star Gate’s canceled. The safety of these United States depends on it.”
Grandpa was nodding. “I was thinking we need to add a visual component. The sound effects are great, but a laser doodad would really sell it.”
“Wait wait wait,” Matty finally said. “You guys are working together?”
The men regarded him with amusement. He was not amused. Everything he knew about his family was not wrong, exactly, but turned sixty degrees. It was like the big red Picasso statue downtown—it became something different when you found a new angle.
“How long’s this been going on?” Matty demanded.
“Since the beginning,” Archibald said. “Before there was even a Telemachus Family.” His circus-animal eyebrows arched their backs. “Or a Telemachus.”
“But you destroyed us! On TV!”
The magician looked chagrined. “That was regrettable.”
“Regrettable? You wrecked everything.”
“That wasn’t Archie’s fault,” Grandpa Teddy said. “He was following the plan. Your grandmother was supposed to come out and do her best trick. The audience would have eaten it up. And then he—”
“And then I,” Archibald put in, “the world’s most notable debunker of psychics, would have eaten crow. Loudly, chewing openmouthed. My endorsement of authenticity, my imprimatur, would have catapulted them over the heads of that Israeli faker himself.”
“May he burn in hell,” Teddy said.
“But that didn’t happen,” Matty said.
“Fate intervened,” Grandpa said. “And your grandmother refused to try again. I must admit, I sulked for a while. But in the end, it was for the best. What would fame have gotten us?”
“Jail, perhaps,” Archibald said.
“Heartache,” Grandpa said.
“Better to take the money,” Archibald said.
Grandpa put his hand on Matty’s shoulder. “The company Archie and I started—ATI? It was built from the start to milk as much money from the government teat as possible. That milk was running dry, what with Smalls’s retirement. But now that the ol’ boy is jazzed up—”
“We’re back in business,” Archibald said.
“Sorry I couldn’t tell you about what was up,” Grandpa said. “Didn’t want you to tip our hand.”
Patti set down Archibald’s drink, a tall orange-colored thing decorated with a sprig of something green, a slice of pineapple, and a pink parasol. Archibald raised it high. “To ATI!”
“Archibald and Telemachus Incorporated,” Grandpa answered.
“Okay, but, but…” The number of questions in Matty’s head was turning into a multivehicle pileup. “Is the micro-lepton gun fake or not?”
“Oh, it’s real,” Archibald said.
“And totally fake,” Grandpa said.
“Ever hear of a placebo?” Archibald asked.
Matty nodded, even though he wasn’t exactly sure what the word meant.
“The gun, my young friend, is that dark cousin of the placebo, the nocebo. If a placebo provides false benefits, the nocebo imparts false harm. The damage to the patient is psychogenic, but no less real.”
“If you believe in it,” Grandpa explained, “it hurts.”
“We’ve tested it on several ‘psychics,’ ” Archibald said. “Once we explain what the gun does to the torsion field, they lose all ability to function. Of course, half of those people were fakers—”
“Unconscious fakers,” Grandpa put in.
“—so we’re faking the fakes.”
Matty took a moment to think about this. “So Uncle Buddy…?”
“Buddy needed to be normal,” Grandpa said. “It was a mercy killing.”
Matty took a sip from the frozen drink, thinking. The two men started talking about the details of government contracts. When the calamari arrived, Grandpa noticed him and said, “What’s the matter, my boy?”
“Nothing,” Matty said. “I was just wondering about…me.”
“You?”
“My power is real, right?”
“My boy, my boy,” Grandpa Teddy said. “Just because there’s a lot of cut glass in the jewelry case doesn’t mean there aren’t a few diamonds. You, Matthias, are descended from greatness.”
“I know, I know, demigods.”
Archibald snorted.
“I mean Maureen McKinnon,” Grandpa said. “The World’s Most Powerful Psychic. I made that medal for her for Christmas one year. A joke between us, but not a joke, because let me tell you, Matthias, she was, indisputably, the real deal.”
“To fair Maureen,” Archibald said, raising his glass again.
“To the love of my life,” Grandpa said.
Matty lifted his piña colada. “To Grandma Mo.”
BUDDY
He turned the plastic-coated pages in a slow simmer of panic. Each picture was more luscious than any pornographic photo he’d ever seen: seductively crossed chicken strips; gleaming pot roast; wet, juicy quesadillas; steaming piles of spaghetti. Too many choices. Far too many. The Build Your Own Burger section made his heart race. For years he’d known what to order, because he remembered ordering it. It was a causal loop that had long ago stopped feeling strange and become reassuring: remembered meals were the ultimate comfort food. But to be set loose in an environment where not only could almost anything be ordered, but if that failed, could be assembled from a vast number of ingredients? Madness.
Then he turned the page, and a squawk escaped his throat. Breakfast Any Time.
The waitress appeared. She was shorter than Buddy and ten years older, with a narrow chin and a nose that was a bit loo large for her face. “See anything you like?” she asked.
For a moment Buddy couldn’t speak. He took a breath and said, “Denny’s is a hellscape of unfettered free will.”
The waitress laughed. “I’m with you on hellscape. Can I start you with a drink?”
“Just ice tea, thanks.”
The waitress smiled cryptically, then walked away. Buddy had asked to sit in her section. For the past four weeks, he’d been engaged in his own experiment in choice. Could he really do anything now? Travel anywhere? Talk to anyone? He’d become that terrifying and terrified thing: a free agent. And yet it was thrilling. He was responsible for no one but himself, and he could do anything he wanted. At least until his money ran out. He’d traveled to Alton, Illinois, then to St. Louis, Missouri, and then, following rumors and referrals, to two other small midwestern towns. At each step, the number of decisions he’d been required to make was nearly paralyzing. But he’d made them. He’d made them without knowing if they were right or wrong. Finally he’d arrived, at nine-thirty at night, at an all-but-empty chain restaurant in Carbondale, Illinois.