The Oddfits (10 page)

Murgatroyd’s memories of those days began to resurface. “Uncle Yusuf said that things were underway
. . .
” he murmured.

“Yes, they would have been if he hadn’t died so suddenly. He’d actually already retired from the Quest when he found you. You were the last one he found.”

The pain from remembering Yusuf, combined with this confirmation of his death, caused Murgatroyd to breathe in sharply and suddenly. Though it seemed silly to cry over something that had happened so long ago, he felt his eyes getting watery. Wiping his face with the back of his hand, Murgatroyd asked, “How did he die?”

Ann’s voice took on a slightly softer tone as she handed him a fistful of grass to wipe his eyes. “Old age.”

“So the ice cream freezer wasn’t a dream? Uncle Yusuf really did take me there?”

Ann nodded.

“And
. . .
and I could see the More Known World when I was younger?”

“Well, more easily than now, assumedly. What really activates the ability to perceive and transfer to the More Known World is the longing to go home. That’s why I brought up those painful memories. You had to access that terrible lonely feeling of not belonging, of yearning for love and true happiness—for home.”

“But my home is here.”

“Is that what you feel, Murgatroyd? Or is that what you believe?”

Murgatroyd thought for a bit. “I
. . .
I don’t know. Aren’t they both the same?”

“You’re an Oddfit, Murgatroyd. You don’t belong in the Known World. Or at least, you didn’t start out belonging to it. An Oddfit child knows intuitively that he or she doesn’t fit in this world and yearns for home. It’s an acute case of homesickness, if you will. As Oddfits stay longer in the Known World, they become more comfortable with it.”

“So Oddfits can grow to belong to the Known World?”

“Yes. Over time, an Oddfit will lose his or her oddfittingness. It may take four years. It may take fifteen. It varies from person to person. By seventeen, the adaptation process is usually complete. But in the process, they cease to be Oddfits and become Sumfits.”

Murgatroyd thought for a while. “So if Sumfits and Stucks belong here in the Known World, where do Oddfits belong? In the More Known World? If this isn’t my home, then where is?”

Ann hadn’t expected him to ask so many questions; she hadn’t really thought Murgatroyd bright enough to do so. She chose her words carefully: something she rarely bothered to do. “We Oddfits don’t really have a single place where we belong. We don’t belong in any of the Worlds. Our home is our constant motion—our constant quest to discover uncharted Territories. It is only in moving and exploring that we have our being, and our constant motion is driven by the perpetual homesickness we feel whenever we stay in one spot for too long. Or rather, perpetual homesickness is what an Oddfit feels on an instinctual level.”

“You mean, we’ll never belong anywhere?” Murgatroyd said, aghast. “We’ll never have a home?”

“Not as long as we remain Oddfits, we won’t. At least not in the conventional sense. We’ll never have a permanent location we can call home. But restlessness and curiosity—those are what we consider home.”

The initial sense of wonder that Murgatroyd experienced upon learning these truths about the Worlds was beginning to fade into worry as he attempted to think about the consequences of joining the Quest. He thought of his life here in Singapore: his parents, his best friend, his job.

“Will I ever be able to come back?” he asked.

Ann shook her head. “Not at all for the first few years. After that, you’ll be able to come back for a few hours at a time, but you’ll be able to spend progressively less and less time here on each visit. And finally, you won’t be able to come back at all. Remember the Oddfit parents I mentioned earlier? The ones who had a Stuck child?”

“Yes?”

“At first, they could come back to visit every now and then, but after a while
. . .
” Ann looked grave. “She’s being raised by an aunt and uncle.”

“But when will the Quest be over?”

“Not for at least several centuries and potentially never.”

“Never? What if we finish exploring all of the More Known World?”

“That’s certainly possible, but very unlikely, given what we believe to be the sheer vastness of the More Known World. We’ve already ventured into over two hundred thousand new Territories, and I’d say we’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“What will I tell my parents?”

Ann arched an eyebrow. “How on earth should I know what you should tell your parents? Tell them you’re going on the Quest. Or tell them whatever you wish. It’s not as if the More Known World is a secret.”

Murgatroyd’s eyes widened. “Really? How come I’ve never heard of it?”

“Interesting question,” Ann sighed. “And it has an interesting answer—one we’ve never quite been able to explain ourselves. It would appear that most people—mainly Sumfits and Stucks, but also the very, very occasional Oddfit—actually do not retain any information about the More Known World, even when they’re told about it.

“As you may imagine, this makes disseminating information a little difficult. Word never spreads, general interest is never aroused; we even attempted a modest publicity campaign of sorts in the late 1980s using funds from a generous donor sympathetic to our cause. The money went into print advertisements, television time
. . .
not Internet; Internet wasn’t big yet.”

Ann shook her head. “As far as we could tell, most people—not all, mind you—would forget about the More Known World within minutes of reading or watching or hearing about it. And the money didn’t go far; it was all gone within a month. Stranger still, a surprisingly large percentage of those who did hear about the More Known World appeared to experience negative physical and psychic symptoms: headaches, nausea, bloating, and an aversion to the means by which information about the More Known World was communicated to them. Many of the newspapers, magazines, and television stations reported higher rates of subscription cancellations, lower sales, and drops in viewer ratings, and refused to do business with us anymore.”

Murgatroyd scratched his right ear thoughtfully. “So these people
can’t
know about the More Known World?”

“Well, from the very rudimentary investigations we’ve conducted so far, it seems that it’s not so much a matter of inability—of ‘can’t’—so much as a matter of unconscious but voluntary rejection—of ‘won’t.’”

“Come again?”

“We think that on some deeper, instinctual level, they might not
want
to know about the More Known World, or the Quest, or Oddfits, Sumfits, and Stucks, or any of the rest of it; and that the symptoms they experience are somehow related to this.”

Murgatroyd was stunned. “‘Not want to know’? How can they not want to know?”

Ann shrugged. “Honestly,
we
don’t know.” She looked away over Murgatroyd’s shoulder into the distance, and very briefly, a troubled, faraway look came into her eye. Almost as if she were talking to herself, she murmured, “Honestly, there’s almost too much that we don’t know.”

Another question popped into Murgatroyd’s mind. “What if I say no? What if choose not to go on the Quest?”

Ann gazed coolly at him. “You will eventually adapt completely to the Known World and you’ll cease to be an Oddfit.”

As Murgatroyd pondered this, Ann spoke firmly. “Murgatroyd, it appears that you are beginning to have second thoughts. Which is fine. The decision is entirely yours to make and it’s important that you think it through carefully.

“Make no mistake about it, the Quest will last all your life, and almost certainly will outlast your life, your generation, and many generations to come. I will also tell you now, for the sake of full disclosure, that the Quest can be a hazardous undertaking, especially if you’re involved in the exploration side of it, which almost all Oddfit Questians are at one point or another. Embarking on the Quest is serious business, and it means that you’ll be leaving your life for good. Even if you could come back to it, it would never be the same. But whatever may come of it, and whatever may become of you, there is one guarantee.”

“What’s that?”

Ann stopped shredding the grass.

“You will never regret it.”

At that moment, the whole world went quiet. The only sounds Murgatroyd could hear were his own breathing, and the earth hurtling through the universe, and his own heart racing towards this wonderful and (dare he think it?) stupendous destiny.

Then he heard Ann’s voice, and all the noise came back again. “I hope I have answered all your questions to your satisfaction.”

“Yes,” Murgatroyd replied in a daze. “Yes, I think so.”

“Now I have a question to ask you. Murgatroyd, do you choose to set out on the Quest?”

Murgatroyd had the sensation of being in a very precarious position, as if he were floating very high above the ground and getting very airsick. Without a word, he lay down on his back in the grass to relieve the lightheadedness that had seized him. He attempted to digest the great mass of astonishing information that had just been set before him. So much to digest, and yet so little! Ann had disclosed so much, but there appeared to be so much more beyond the so much that she had disclosed that it seemed as if the past half hour’s exchange had only made a tiny dent in it all. He didn’t know what to think.

He continued to lie in the grass, hands over his eyes to shield them from the merciless sun, and could do nothing but feel overwhelmed and queasy.

“Murgatroyd.”

At the sound of his name, he opened one eye and squinted through a crack in his fingers at the emerald eye that looked unflinchingly back at him.

Ann repeated her question. “Murgatroyd. Do you choose to set out on the Quest?”

Something extraordinarily stupendous is waiting for me
.

Murgatroyd sat up. “Yes, I do.”

For the first time since Murgatroyd had met her, Ann’s face broke into a wide but short-lived grin.

“Excellent.” Her features once again assumed their customary cucumberish coolness. “You will need to pack some things for the Quest. Bring a toothbrush and a clean change of underwear.”

Murgatroyd waited. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“Erh. Can I borrow pen and paper?”

Ann fished around in her bag for the requested items and handed them to Murgatroyd, who wrote down carefully, “Bring one toothbrush and one underwear.” When he had written this reminder, he carefully folded it in half and inserted it into his wallet.

“Are you done?” Ann asked.

“Yes,” Murgatroyd answered.

“Then we’ll meet back here this evening at seven o’clock.”

“Okay, meet back here at seven o—” Murgatroyd realized what he was repeating. “Hah? For what?”

Ann frowned. “For what else? You did say you wanted to go on the Quest, didn’t you?”

“But—but—” Murgatroyd stammered. “So soon?”

“Why not?”

“Erh. Erh.” His mind raced through the things he had to do. “I—I have to report for work at four. And I have to give my boss notice. I have to tell my parents. I have to say goodbye to Kay Huat. I have
. . .
things to wrap up.”

“‘Things to wrap up’? You mean, you need more time?”

He nodded.

“Hmm. Interesting.”

“Interesting?”

Ann frowned. “Yes. Very.”

“Oh,” Murgatroyd replied. Timidly, he asked, “So, is it
. . .
possible?”

“To have more time?”

“Erh. Yes?”

Ann pursed her lips and turned the matter over in her head. “It
should
be. How many days do you need?”

“Erh. I don’t know.” He tried to think frantically of a length of time that didn’t seem unreasonably long, but long enough for him to figure out the logistics of leaving his entire life behind. “Five days?”

“Five days? You’re certain?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. He wasn’t quite sure why he had chosen five, but there it was.

To his relief, Ann nodded. “All right then. You have five days to set your affairs in order. This Friday at seven p.m. sharp, I will meet you at the farthest end of Bedok Jetty in East Coast Park. Is that understood?”

Murgatroyd nodded. “Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank me, Murgatroyd.” Ann stood up abruptly and brushed the shreds of grass off her dress. “I’m only the messenger. Goodbye.”

“Wait, wait!” Murgatroyd cried, pulling out the paper and pen Ann had given him and hurriedly jotting down the details. “Okay. Friday, seven p.m., Bedok Jetty, East Coast Park. Is that correct?”

“It is,” Ann said. She turned and began to walk away.

“Oh, you forgot your pen!” Murgatroyd called after her.

“Keep it,” Ann yelled over her shoulder. “I saw you using it to pick your ears.”

Murgatroyd was too astounded by what had just occurred to be embarrassed by this parting observation. He spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of complete shock, wandering about the Orchard Road area, bumping into shoppers and being apologetic. Despite his condition, he somehow managed to catch a bus and find his way to L’Abattoir, albeit one hour late, and proceeded about his work in an uncharacteristically incompetent manner. To the amazement of his fellow waitstaff, the usually savvy, butler-esque Shwet Foo appeared to be doing an extended impression of a lumbering, brain-damaged water buffalo. Out of exasperation, they finally shut him up in the pantry with a glass of warm water, where he could do no more harm. (Or so they thought, until they found the floor strewn with loose potatoes and white sugar at the end of the night.) Occasionally, during the evening, the kitchen staff would hear an insistent little rapping on the pantry door accompanied by an equally insistent little voice saying that he had something very important to tell Shakti. But as the boss wasn’t at the restaurant that night, they simply shrugged to each other and carried on with their work. When the last guest had left the restaurant, they changed Murgatroyd out of his waiter’s uniform into his regular clothes, checked the restaurant records to find out his home address, made sure he had enough money for cab fare, and sent him home in a taxi.