Oracle

by Mike Resnick

  He drew his laser pistol once again, prepared to incinerate anyone who happened to see the door open, but when he stepped out into a corridor that widened and narrowed as pointlessly as had the street in the Blue Devils’ sector of Quichancha, he found that it was empty.

  The door snapped shut behind him as he turned to his left and began walking, only to come to a dead end before he passed any doors, stairways, or airlifts. He turned back and retraced his steps, walked past the room through which he had entered, came to a corner, turned right, and finally came upon a ramp that led down to a lower level.

  He walked down it cautiously, then heard low voices up ahead, and crouched down, weapon at the ready. The voices were speaking in one of the guttural Blue Devil dialects, and when they neither approached nor vanished after he had waited for a full minute, he began descending the ramp again.

  He emerged in a large, many-windowed room that was filled with alien furnishings. There were holograms and paintings of scenes no sane mind could have imagined, and chairs built not only for Blue Devils but also some for multi-jointed Lodinites and elephantine beings whose physical attributes were beyond his ability to conceive. A holo screen in one corner showed a disconcerting pattern of flashing lights, all in varying shades of gray, which he decided would have an almost hypnotic effect on anyone who concentrated on it.

  He heard footsteps approaching and ducked behind one of the oversized chairs. A moment later a Blue Devil entered the room from the far side, walked through it, and left through a doorway off to the left.

  The Injun stood up, looked at both doorways, and finally decided to follow the Blue Devil. At least it had some destination in mind, and if it ran into any of its companions, he would probably hear them exchanging greetings before he stumbled upon them.

  He gave the Blue Devil a thirty-second head start, then passed through the doorway and entered a long, winding corridor. It passed a number of closed doors, then terminated in another large room, this one filled with computers and radios of alien design, and manned by four more Blue Devils.

  The Injun knew he couldn't pass through it unobserved, and while he felt no compunction about killing every Blue Devil in the room, he doubted that he could do so before one of them got off an alarm or distress signal, so he retraced his steps until he came to the room where he had seen the Blue Devil and walked through the other doorway.

  It looked like it was going to dead-end against a large yellow wall, but just as he was about to turn back, he saw an extremely narrow stairwell off to his right. On the assumption that anyone as valuable as the Oracle wouldn't be kept on the ground level, he opted for climbing up rather than down.

  He ascended the stairs, found himself on a large, irregularly-shaped landing, and was trying to figure out what to do next when the smell of food—human food—wafted down a corridor. He followed the odor, and came to a small kitchen where a Blue Devil was preparing a steak of mutated beef and a small salad.

  He crouched in the shadows of the adjacent room and waited. After a few minutes a Blue Devil entered the kitchen, passing within four feet of him, uttered a terse command, and left. The Blue Devil who was preparing the food walked to a glowing sphere hovering near the wall, said something into it, and shortly thereafter another Blue Devil, this one unarmed, entered the kitchen through another door, put the food on a tray, and left.

  The Injun realized that he would have to pass through the kitchen if he was to follow the Blue Devil with the tray. He stood up, entered the kitchen, coughed once to get the chef's attention, and trained his laser pistol on it.

  “Not a move, not a sound,” said the Injun in a low voice.

  The Blue Devil stared at him and remained motionless.

  “Where is the Oracle?” asked the Injun.

  The Blue Devil made no answer.

  “You heard me—where do you keep her?”

  The Blue Devil said something unintelligible.

  “Oh, shit!” muttered the Injun. “Don't tell me you can't speak Terran?”

  The Blue Devil spoke again, and again the Injun couldn't understand a word of it.

  He looked around, saw what appeared to be a half-opened storage closet, and, still pointing his weapon at the Blue Devil, he walked over to it and opened it.

  “In here,” he said, gesturing the Blue Devil to enter the closet.

  The Blue Devil looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “I haven't got any time to waste! Now, move!”

  The Blue Devil remained motionless, and the Injun reached out and grabbed it by the arm. It immediately reached out for his throat with its other hand.

  The Injun planted a kick against the Blue Devil's major leg joint, then brought his pistol crashing down on the creature's skull. It collapsed in a heap, and, not bothering to check whether it was alive or dead, he dragged it over to the storage closet and crammed it in, after which he closed the door. There was a computer lock on the door, and he turned his laser pistol on it, intending to burn out the lock's memory, but when he pulled the trigger, no beam came forth.

  He examined the pistol, found that the blow he had struck the Blue Devil had broken the connection to the power pack, and placed it in a drawer. Then, realizing that he was almost a full minute behind the tray carrier, he raced out the far door after it.

  The corridor in which he found himself was relatively straight, and it soon broadened out and became almost as wide as a room. Finally it turned sharply, and as he stuck his head around the corner, he saw five armed Blue Devils guarding a large door.

  “That's got to be it,” he muttered.

  He waited a minute, then another, to see if the Blue Devil with the tray emerged from the room that was being guarded, but it didn't appear. Of course, he reasoned, it could simply have turned the tray over to one of the guards and left by another route. There were a number of corridors leading off to both the right and the left, and there was no way he could reconstruct what had happened. It was even possible that these Blue Devils were guarding something other than the Oracle, and that the one he had followed was still carrying her food to her, but he doubted it. Besides, if that was the case, he was going to have to take all five guards out before he could continue his quest ... but they hadn't guarded anything else in this crazily-constructed house, not even their communication center, and it seemed likely that nothing but the Oracle could command so much attention from armed guards.

  The Injun realized, with an enormous surge of eagerness, that it was time to put his strategy to the test.

  He withdrew his sonic pistol and deactivated the safety. Then, with his free hand, he reached into his pocket, pulled out the alphanella seeds that he had ordered Broussard to confiscate back in Quichancha, carefully placed them between his teeth, and bit down, hard.

  31.

  “They are within the compound,” announced the Oracle, peering sightlessly off into space.

  “Both of them?” asked the Iceman.

  “Yes.” She turned to him and smiled. “Everything is coming to fruition.”

  “I take it that I'm part of the plan?”

  “In some eventualities, you are. In others you are not.”

  “What do you think I'm going to do?”

  She looked amused. “In none of the futures I can see do I answer that question.”

  He pulled out a small cigar. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Tough,” he said, lighting it.

  “There,” she said, still amused. “You've stood up to me. Do you feel better now, Iceman?”

  “Not especially.”

  “But you do not fear me?”

  “Not especially.”

  “You should, you know.”

  The Iceman shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  “Do you know that in all my life, there is only one man I have ever been afraid of?”

  “Oh? Who was that?”

  “You.”

  “I'm flattered.”

  “That was a lon
g time ago,” said the Oracle. “I see you now and I feel no fear.” She stared at him, her eyes finally focused in the present. “My only reaction to you is contempt.”

  “Not hatred?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “One must feel some respect to feel hatred, if not respect for the person, then at least respect for the harm he can cause.”

  “And you consider me harmless?”

  “Yes.” She paused, then spoke again. “Even with the explosives you have hidden inside your artificial leg, I consider you harmless.”

  “You know about them?”

  “I know everything,” she replied. “Am I not the Oracle?”

  “You're an Oracle imprisoned in a force field,” said the Iceman. “How can you stop me if I decide to detonate the explosives right now?”

  “You are an old man, Iceman, and your heart has undergone many strains during your life. If you try to detonate the explosives, you will feel a searing pain in your chest, your heart will burst, and you will die.” She stared intently at him. “Already it beats more rapidly, already it pumps your blood at a dangerous rate. In a million times a million futures, you will not even be aware of it. But,” she added, stepping two paces to her right, “if I move here, there exists a future in which you feel a warning pain, does there not?”

  The Iceman felt a sharp pain in his chest. Breathing suddenly became difficult, and he experienced an overwhelming sensation of pressure. He tried to conceal his reaction, but was unable to.

  “You see?” she said with a satisfied smile. “There is one future, among the billions in which you detonate the explosives successfully, in which your pain does not cease. It become unbearable, and in that future, just before you die, you realize that what I have told you is the truth.”

  The pain finally began subsiding, and the color returned to the Iceman's face. He took a deep breath, and leaned against the door for support.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said after a moment.

  “That is what the Oracle does: She answers questions.”

  “How the hell have they managed to keep you locked up here? Why hasn't your jailor suffered a heart attack or a stroke at the proper moment?”

  “They have chosen my keepers very carefully,” she answered. “In no future that I have been able to envision have any of them suffered from any pain or disease to the extent that it would allow me my freedom.”

  “How do they feed you?” asked the Iceman. “Surely they have to dampen at least a portion of the field for that.”

  “A tiny portion,” she replied. “You shall see in just a moment.” She raised her voice. “You may enter.”

  A Blue Devil bearing a tray of food walked through the doorway, set it down on the floor right next to the force field, and then exited. A moment later a musical note sounded on the intercom system, and Penelope backed up against a wall, as far from the tray as possible. There was a sound of static as a portion of the field, no more than a foot square, dampened at floor level, and she walked forward, knelt down, reached for the tray very gingerly, and carefully pulled it to her. The moment it was across the dividing line on the floor, there was more static and a pre-recorded Blue Devil voice informed them that the field was once again impregnable.

  She carried the tray to a table and set it down there.

  “You see?” she asked.

  “And you haven't had a living thing on your side of the field for how many years?”

  “Since the Mock Turtle's unhappy demise.”

  “You've had no human contact in all that time?”

  “I've had no contact of any kind.” She paused. “Well, that's not entirely true. I had a doll once, but it fell apart four years ago.”

  The Iceman tried to picture an 18-year-old Oracle playing with a doll, and couldn't. But he had no difficulty envisioning a lonely 18-year-old Penelope Bailey hugging the doll to her for comfort.

  “I still feel sorry for you, Penelope,” he said. “It's not your fault you were blessed or cursed with this ability, and it's not your fault that the Democracy didn't know how to handle you, and it's probably not even your fault that the Blue Devils have confined you here for all these years—but you are what you are, and you can't be allowed out of here. If you can't be killed, you have to be contained.”

  “Dream your dreams of heroism, Iceman,” she replied. “What harm can they do?”

  Suddenly she turned and faced the wall behind her, and stood perfectly rigid for a moment. Then she turned back to him.

  “Who were you helping that time?” asked the Iceman.

  “No one you know,” she replied. “Tonight is all but resolved. I have other concerns to look after.”

  Her placidity vanished, to be replaced by a contemptuous frown.

  “Fool!” she said. “Does he think that will affect my ability to deal with him?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked the Iceman.

  “Jimmy Two Feathers.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He approaches, and he thinks to befuddle me by befuddling himself.” She turned to the Iceman. “His mind is gone—but I do not read minds. I see futures.”

  “He bit into a seed?” asked the Iceman.

  “As if it matters.”

  “It matters,” said the Iceman. “If he doesn't know what he's going to do next—”

  “I will know!” snapped the Oracle.

  “I thought you saw a myriad of futures, and manipulated things to achieve the one you wanted. How can you manipulate a man who currently has the intelligence of an insect?”

  “That's why you are here, Iceman,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “If I can't stop him, you will.”

  “You've got a healthy imagination, Penelope.”

  “I do not imagine things, Iceman,” replied the Oracle. “I foresee them.”

  “Well, you've foreseen this one wrong,” said the Iceman. “If he can kill you, I won't lift a finger to stop him.”

  “You will do what you are destined to do.”

  32.

  The Iceman was about to reply when the door opened and the Injun, wild-eyed and disheveled, burst into the room. He held a sonic pistol in one hand and a knife dripping with blood in the other.

  “Who are you?” he demanded of the Iceman in a strained, hollow voice.

  “I'm a friend,” replied the Iceman.

  The Injun stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “We both work for 32,” continued the Iceman.

  “That bastard!” screamed the Injun. “First I kill her, then him!”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  The Injun giggled. “Why? I killed all the Blue Devils out in the hall.”

  The Iceman glanced at the Oracle, who was looking at the Injun with an amused smile on her face.

  You're not worried, he thought. He's standing right in front of you, out of his goddamned mind and planning to kill you, and you think it's funny. He's not the one.

  The Injun turned to face the Oracle.

  “What are you grinning about, lady?” he mumbled. “You think I'm kidding?”

  “No, Jimmy Two Feathers,” she replied serenely. “I know you're not kidding.”

  He raised his pistol and sighted it between her eyes, then lowered it. “I'm thirsty,” he announced.

  “There's water on the main level,” said the Oracle.

  “There's water on the table right next to you,” said the Injun.

  He began approaching her.

  “Don't!” shouted the Iceman, but it was too late.

  The Injun hit the force field, shrieked once, and bounced back off of it like a rubber ball. He pounded into the wall, spun off it, and fell in a crumpled heap at the Iceman's feet.

  The Iceman knelt down next to him and felt for a pulse. It was still racing at almost twice the normal rate.

  “What was that all about?” asked the Iceman, looking up at the Oracle.

  “I don't understand you,” she replied.<
br />
  “Why did you let him get all the way to this room and kill those Blue Devils, only to wind up like this?”

  “They were just Blue Devils,” she said with an unconcerned shrug.

  “I thought you needed him to get you out of here,” persisted the Iceman.

  “I was mistaken.”

  Too easy, Penelope. You knew he'd come in here, and you knew he couldn't kill you. This is still going according to plan—but what the hell kind of a plan requires a madman to be lying unconscious at my feet?

  “You look confused, Iceman,” she said, and again he could see amusement, and something more—condescension—in her pale blue eyes.

  “I am,” he admitted. “But I'll figure it out.”

  “If you live long enough.”

  “The same might be said for you,” he retorted.

  She smiled. “I like living, Iceman. I just might live forever.”

  “I have no objection,” said the Iceman. “As long as you stay on your side of the force field.”

  She stared at him, a puzzled expression on her face. “I wonder...”

  “What do you wonder?”

  “I was born in the Democracy, and you on the Inner Frontier. I am 22 years old, and you are in your sixties. I know nothing of your past, and you know nothing of my future. We have nothing in common except our enmity. The odds of two people like ourselves meeting even once during our lifetimes are almost incalculable.” She paused. “Why should our lives have become so interconnected, I wonder?”

  “I don't know,” admitted the Iceman.

  “It is curious, is it not?” she mused.

  “I'd have been just as happy never to know you existed.”

  “Happiness is not for you and me, Iceman,” she replied. “And as for your never knowing I existed, soon more people than you can imagine shall know it.”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Ah, but you can't,” she said with another tranquil smile. “All you can do is stand here helplessly and await what must happen next.”