Oracle

by Mike Resnick

  Finally, when he felt well enough, he summoned Broussard to his quarters.

  “How are you today, sir?” asked the young man, entering the room a moment later.

  “Much better.”

  “I'm glad to hear it.”

  “Really?” asked the Injun with a smile. “If I were you, I'd be heartbroken to hear it. I'm about to cut into your time with your doctor.”

  “This is my job, sir.”

  “Well, it's time for me to get to work on my job. Pull up a chair.”

  Broussard walked to a corner of the room, picked up a chair, and carried it over to the bed.

  “Now sit down and get comfortable,” said the Injun.

  Broussard sat on the chair and grinned wryly. “Well, the sitting part is easy, sir.”

  “Who the hell furnished this place? You wouldn't think something this dull would also be uncomfortable.”

  “I've often wondered that myself, sir,” admitted Broussard.

  The Indian looked amused, and then his face became serious. “So much for small talk. We've got more important things to discuss.”

  “The Oracle?” suggested Broussard.

  “Yes.”

  “Before we speak further, perhaps we should go to a secure room.”

  “Not necessary,” said the Injun. “I ordered the computer to let me know the instant anyone attempts to monitor us.” He tossed the map to Broussard. “Take a look at this and see if it makes any sense to you.”

  Broussard studied the map carefully for a moment, then looked up.

  “I take it that you want to reach the location that's been highlighted?”

  “Right.”

  “On foot or by vehicle?”

  “I'm not sure yet,” said the Injun.

  “By day or at night?”

  “It makes no difference.”

  “Yes it does, sir.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Because the current temperature is 57 degrees Celsius, and there's no way you can walk there and back without dehydrating and probably suffering heat stroke,” answered Broussard. “You may be feeling better, but it's still only been two days since you underwent major surgery.”

  “What will the temperature be tonight?” asked the Injun.

  “Perhaps 44 degrees Celsius, which is still formidable,” answered Broussard.

  The Injun grimaced. “Then I guess we drive.” He paused. “Too damned bad. Your vehicle is pretty easy to identify.”

  “That's an area inhabited almost exclusively by Blue Devils,” said Broussard. “A human walking through it would be even more conspicuous.”

  “Have you got a safe house anywhere around there?”

  “I don't think so. We can ask the computer.”

  The Injun shook his head. “Don't bother,” he said. “I already asked. The computer's not aware of any. I just thought there might be things that you didn't tell it.”

  Broussard looked puzzled.

  “Any computer that can be built can be breached,” explained the Injun.

  “Not this one, sir.”

  “I admire your confidence,” said the Injun dryly. “But I've got half a dozen friends who could invade it in less than two hours.”

  “I sincerely doubt that, sir,” replied Broussard firmly.

  “I'm sure you do,” said the Injun, unimpressed. “I'm not here to argue the point. I just want to know if there's a nearby safe house.”

  “To the best of my knowledge, we don't have one in Quichancha. I believe we have four on the entire planet, all in other cities.” Broussard fidgeted uneasily. “May I ask why you want to know?”

  “There is every possibility that I am going to have to do some very unpleasant things to a Blue Devil,” answered the Injun. “I'd rather not have to do them in a building that's filled with other Blue Devils. I'd much rather take him to a secure location first.”

  “Is murder a possibility?”

  “If he doesn't tell me what I want to know, it's an absolute certainty,” said the Injun. He paused thoughtfully. “It probably will be anyway. I don't want him reporting what I know or identifying me to the Oracle, and I don't want him around when the Whistler shows up.”

  “The Whistler? Who's that?”

  “I'm afraid that's restricted information.”

  Broussard frowned. “You could cause some problems for the embassy, sir. If you kill a Blue Devil—and I assume this one is in some way connected to the Oracle—they're going to assume the embassy ordered it, or at least sanctioned it.”

  “Embassies exist to confront problems,” replied the Injun with no show of concern. “They'll find a way.”

  “I don't know, sir,” said Broussard doubtfully. “It would be extremely difficult to convince the Blue Devils that we didn't at least have prior knowledge of the killing, and that implies either consent or approval.” He paused. “After all, I drive an embassy vehicle, and as you pointed out before, it will stand out in a residential area.”

  “So get an unmarked vehicle.”

  “I'd have to put through a request for funds, and even if my request was approved, there's still every likelihood that it could be traced to the embassy.”

  “I don't mean to sound insensitive,” said the Injun, “but I really don't give a damn how much trouble I cause the embassy. My assignment is more important.”

  “You don't understand, sir,” said Broussard. “Even if I agreed with you, that's all the more reason for not involving the embassy. It will simply put the Oracle on the alert.”

  “Just killing the Blue Devil will do that,” said the Injun. Suddenly a plan began to take shape in his mind. “Unless...”

  He fell silent for a moment, and Broussard waited patiently for him to continue.

  “I think I've got a way to protect both our asses,” he announced at last.

  “Yours and mine, sir?” asked Broussard, puzzled.

  The Injun shook his head. “Mine and the embassy's. Can you get your hands on some seed?”

  “Seed, sir?”

  “Alphanella seeds.”

  “They're illegal on every planet in the Democracy.”

  “Allow me to point out to you that we're not in the Democracy.”

  “They're illegal on Hades, too.”

  “You haven't answered my question,” noted the Injun. “Can you get some seed?”

  “It's possible,” said Broussard reluctantly.

  “Within the embassy?”

  Broussard shook his head. “No. But there's a woman in Red House...”

  “User or seller?”

  “A user.”

  “Good,” said the Injun. “Confiscate half a dozen seeds.”

  “What's the purpose of this, sir?” asked Broussard.

  “Whether they trace the killing to the embassy or not, they're going to know I'm after the Oracle the second I kill the Blue Devil.”

  “What have the seeds got to do with anything?” persisted Broussard.

  “If I take out most of the residents of the building and leave a couple of half-chewed seeds on the premises, the embassy could claim that I was a hopped-up chewer who'd gone on a binge and offer a reward for me, giving out a phony ID and hologram, which will get them off the hook while still giving me freedom of movement, and in the meantime it might hide my real reason for being there, at least temporarily.” He paused. “I'd have to do it at night, and I'd have to go there on foot. It wouldn't do to have an embassy vehicle being seen transporting a maniac to the scene of the crime.” The Injun frowned. “I'll still need your help, though. I can't read or speak the language, and I've got to hit my Blue Devil's quarters first, before I kill the rest of them. I don't want him escaping if he hears any noise elsewhere in the building.”

  Broussard considered what he had heard for a long moment, then shook his head. “No chance, sir,” he said at last. “The embassy will never be a party to this. You're speaking about blithely killing dozens of innocent beings simply for the sake of misdirecting the Oracle.�
��

  The Injun shrugged. “They're just aliens.”

  “The ambassador would point out that on this planet we're the aliens.”

  “Spare me his platitudes,” said the Injun. “The Democracy's at war with the Oracle, and in a war, sometimes civilians get hurt.”

  “I don't know anything about the Oracle,” admitted Broussard, “but I do know that the Democracy's not at war with Hades, and your proposed actions could precipitate one.” He paused. “I know the way the bureaucracy works. They'll kick it all the way up to Deluros VIII, and even if their transmissions aren't intercepted, your Blue Devil will probably have died of old age or disease before they make a decision.”

  “Well, that's that,” said the Injun. “I can't do it without the embassy's complicity. I might get my hands on the seed, and I might find the Blue Devil I'm after, and I might kill enough other Blue Devils to confuse the Oracle—but if the embassy won't support the cover story, I'll have both sides hunting for my scalp with no place to hide.” He sighed deeply. “I guess we go to Plan B.”

  “Just killing the one Blue Devil?” asked Broussard.

  “Yeah,” said the Injun. He frowned. “I hate to do it, though. Once he's dead, there's no way the Oracle can mistake what's going on.” He paused, considering the situation. “And if he doesn't talk,” he added, “I'm going to eliminate my only link to the Oracle.” He shook his head unhappily. “I just wish they didn't all look so much alike.”

  “If you could follow him, would you prefer it, sir?” asked Broussard.

  “Much.” The Injun looked at Broussard. “Why? What do you have in mind?”

  “There may be a way, sir.”

  “Yeah?” said the Injun. “If you can come up with one, you've just made my life a hell of a lot easier.”

  “I don't think so, sir,” said Broussard seriously.

  16.

  Port Marrakech, Port Samarkand, and Port Maracaibo were all high in the night sky as the Injun emerged from the unlit landcar half a mile from his destination.

  “This is as close as I can go without attracting attention, sir,” said Broussard apologetically. “I'll wait here for you.”

  The Injun nodded absently and tried to get his bearings. The suddenly-broadening, suddenly-narrowing, always-twisting streets looked a lot different in person than they did on a map, and he already felt mildly disoriented.

  He had a small lithium-powered flashlight in the pocket of his tunic, and his first inclination was to pull out the map and double-check his position, but Men with maps weren't supposed to be here, and the light would only broadcast his presence.

  He had wanted to approach his destination via alleyways, but there weren't any. His next notion was to go underground and make his way via the sewer system, but they had no map of it, and he didn't relish trying to find his way with no maps and no landmarks. So, keeping as near to the irregular buildings as he could, he began walking slowly and silently through the incredibly hot night. The humidity was minimal, but between the heat, the effort he was expending, and the tension, both his skin and clothes were soaked with perspiration before he had traveled more than one hundred yards.

  He was fast approaching a very sharp corner, and suddenly he could hear voices—alien voices—somewhere up ahead of him. He turned and looked for the landcar, but it was lost in the shadows.

  The voices grew clearer and louder, until he estimated that they were no more than thirty yards from the corner. He decided to duck into the doorway of the nearest building until they passed, then discovered that it didn't have a doorway. He backtracked a few steps, found a small alcove between that building and the one he had just passed, and darted into it. Then he crouched down and waited.

  Five Blue Devils suddenly came into view as they turned the corner. One of them had an extremely high-pitched voice, but he couldn't discern any other difference among them. Four of them wore the triangles he had seen on his first day in Quichancha, and all five wore what appeared to be stoles made of some metallic fibre wrapped about their torsos.

  As they reached a spot in the street opposite his hiding place, two of them got into what seemed to be an argument, and suddenly all five stopped walking. Voices grew strident, postures grew aggressive, and they remained where they were, gesticulating wildly.

  The Injun felt his calves and thighs cramping up after a few minutes. He was horribly uncomfortable, his legs aching, his body pouring sweat, but he didn't dare move while the aliens were there. It would be bad enough to be seen walking through this section of the city, but to be found skulking would be infinitely worse.

  Finally he could stand the pain no longer, and he carefully leaned forward, momentarily assuming the position of a runner in the starting blocks, alternately stretching each leg out behind him. When he was through, he carefully brought one leg beneath him and moved to a kneeling position.

  The Blue Devils were still arguing, but a moment later one of them made a gesture that the Injun couldn't comprehend, and two of them stalked off into the darkness. The remaining three spoke among themselves for another minute and then continued walking in the direction they had been going.

  The Injun waited for almost three minutes, long enough to make sure that none of them were coming back, and then carefully stood erect, stuck his head out, looked in both directions, and quickly walked to the corner.

  As the map had shown, the street made a 160-degree turn, almost doubling back on itself, and simultaneously narrowed to a point where it was less than ten feet wide. The Injun felt very claustrophobic as he kept walking and the street kept narrowing. Within another fifty yards he had to walk sideways, with his back pressed against a wall, to pass between buildings on the opposite sides of the alien street.

  Then it broadened again, not slowly and gradually, but instantly, and in a single stride he went from a street so narrow that it seemed like a corridor to a thoroughfare so wide that he thought for a moment that he had turned the wrong way and wound up in a public square.

  There was no artificial illumination, nor, with the three moons overhead, was any needed. It was almost bright enough to read by the moonlight, and he realized that he had almost three hundred yards to walk before the street narrowed again, three hundred yards in which there were no parked vehicles, no lampposts, no benches, no trash atomizers, nothing to hide behind, and he would be the only living, moving thing.

  He didn't like the odds of crossing those three hundred yards without being seen, and he stopped, looking for some less exposed route. His first thought was to go via the rooftops, but very few of the buildings were remotely similar in height and structure. The sewers were out, too: even if he had a map, which he didn't, he couldn't spot a manhole and didn't know how to go about finding an entrance to them.

  Finally he decided that there was no alternative to simply walking as quickly and silently as he could, and this he proceeded to do, staying as close to the buildings on the left side of the street as possible. When he had covered slightly more than half the distance, he saw a Blue Devil staring at him from a third or fourth-story window.

  Fighting the urge to run, he looked up, saluted, and continued walking. He expected to hear outraged screams, or sirens, or approaching footsteps, or something, but nothing happened, and in another ninety seconds he had turned another corner and found himself on a street that, for a change, seemed neither too wide nor too narrow.

  He stepped into some deep shadows as two more Blue Devils came into view, and was prepared to wait, motionless, until they had passed him, but instead they entered a small building, and he began walking again. Then another pair of Blue Devils began approaching, and he once again hid in the shadows until they had walked by.

  For some reason this stretch of the street had much more activity than he had encountered thus far, but fortunately the buildings and shadows afforded him instant hiding places. Four more groups of Blue Devils and one single being caused him to duck out of sight before he made it the final two hundred yards
to his destination, but eventually he arrived at the building he sought.

  And couldn't find a door.

  Whispering a curse to himself, he began circling the structure, looking for some means of ingress. He finally came upon a miscolored section and leaned tentatively against it.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed harder, with no results. Finally he stood back a few feet and waved a hand, hoping that some hidden scanner might react to the motion. Still nothing.

  He walked once more around the building, and came back to the miscolored section, convinced that it was the entrance. He stood a few feet away from it, trying to determine how to trigger the locking mechanism. Obviously it didn't react to force, or to motion. He chanced shining his flashlight on it for a second, just long enough to make sure that there were no buttons, buzzer, bells, or computer locks.

  Next he looked around the ground, hoping he might find some mechanism there, but he couldn't see anything remotely promising.

  Vrief Domo lived on the third level. He looked up, wondering if he could scale the building, and decided that he couldn't.

  He spent another five minutes trying to figure out how to gain entrance to the building, and couldn't come up with an answer. At last he leaned against a wall next to the miscolored portion, mentally exhausted—and almost fell over backward when a four-foot-wide section of the wall slid behind the miscolored part of the building.

  He looked around quickly, before the wall slid back and plunged the interior of the building into total darkness, and found a narrow staircase. He shone his light on it just long enough to fix the height of each stair in his mind, and then slowly, carefully, began ascending. Fourteen stairs later he reached a landing, felt around for the railing, couldn't find one, flashed his light again for an instant, and discovered that the stairwell ended on the second level.

  Deciding that he hated alien buildings even more than he hated 32, he stood still and tried to reason things out. As far as he could determine, there was only one door to the building, the one he had inadvertently triggered. If that was so, this was the only set of stairs leading up from the ground floor. Therefore, everyone living on a higher level had to come to this point before proceeding. Then what did they do?