Free Kalifornia by Marc Laidlaw Page B

isn’t here, in isolation from the world.
You have to be within the world, and let it into you. That’s the only fair way
to involve yourself in change.
    “Mr. Figueroa,” said a voice, “your Seer is here.”
    He turned away from the glass. “Send her in, please.”
    His stomach fluttered as if he were a boy again. It felt like wire
fright, although he wasn’t sending, and the building’s anti-wireshow field
prevented him from receiving all but specially coded business signals. The
Seer always made him nervous and excited. Anticipation of her presence often
turned his thoughts to metaphysics and philosophy.
    She stepped silently into the room.
    “Seer,” he said, bowing a bit. He fought his nervousness with
formality. He restrained himself from blurting all his doubts at once.
    She glided up to the desk and extended a hand from beneath a
baggy gauze of multilayered and many-colored fabrics, all of them more or less
transparent. She was slung with gold chains, rhinestones, amethyst pyramids,
antique fuses, papier-mache and turquoise beads, leprechaun charms, Monopoly
pieces, mouse skulls, sharks’ teeth, gold fillings, pierced tektites, horseshoe
magnets, ginseng and St. John the Conqueror roots, knit mojo bags, greasewood yonis
and wax lingams, tiny flickering neon mandalas, brass bells, antique soapstone
TV sets. . . .
    He took her scented hand and kissed it. She turned the palm toward
him and he leaped back with a startled sound.
    An eye winked out of her palm.
    She laughed at his surprise. “It’s only a hologram, Alfredo.
Nothing to fear.”
    It winked farewell when she took her hand away.
    “It looks so real,” he said.
    “Ah, it’s supposed to. But it’s all illusion. Pierce the veil,
remember? Don’t take anything for granted.”
    “I try to keep it in mind,” he said earnestly. “I’m always
reminding myself that it’s . . . it’s all unreal. Is that
it?”
    “Yes, unreal. A dream, a dance. Maya.”
    He wondered. And all his thoughts of the audience—were they
illusory too? What did he really know of the world beyond the rarefied realm in
which he’d traveled? Nothing! Only what he’d picked up from the wires. And his
programming choices were tailored, however unintentionally, by his mood, to
suit his expectations. What evidence did he have that his audience was composed
of isolated individuals without families of their own? Mightn’t that “insight”
simply reflect his own recent despair and the limited extent of his experience?
    Throwing her hands over her head, the Seer spun a few quick steps
of tarantella to catch his attention.
    He froze, her captive prey.
    She dropped her arms and came around the desk. “Tell me what
worries you, Alfredo. I see fear knit up in your brow. There’s a dark cloud
over your crown chakra and clots in your solar plexus.” Her face darkened
slightly when she looked down at his groin. “Ugh. And there’s something that
looks like a hairball in your root chakra, bacon grease and steel wool—”
    He couldn’t keep from smiling when she said that.
    “This needs immediate expert attention, a kundalini snaking of
your plumbing. How could you have let it go so long?”
    Her nimble fingers worked the snaps of his belt and trousers. She
chanted under her breath. Bells rang as she lowered her head. The veils hid her
activities from sight although he felt them well enough. He gasped, stumbled
backward, and caught himself against the desk. The fog of mental chatter slowly
parted. . . .
    Suddenly Sandy streaked past the window—no more than ten feet
away—waving into the room, his mouth going slack as he saw his father and the
Seer. He lost his balance, tumbled from the board, but the wave carried him on.
    “Good God,” Alfredo said.
    “So patriarchal,” said the Seer, raising her head to scowl at him.
“No wonder you have such problems.”
    “No, not that. My son.”
    “He worries you? Well, rest your mind.” She straightened, pressed
against