The Oracle, page 14
An old wooden stable door hangs half off its hinges. It reaches up to shoulder height, with a gap near the top to allow for airflow. Sophia peers into the darkness. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sight of men and women bound hand and foot, lying on straw bedding intended for horses. Several of them have gags over their mouths.
“Hey,” one of the women says, calling out just loud enough to be heard, but trying not to raise her voice. “Please… Help us.”
This isn’t the work of the Germans. They don’t corral people. If the Nazis have a vendetta, they’ll sweep through a village and kill the innocent in reprisal, but they don’t take hostages or prisoners. They may be brutal, but they’re efficient and quick.
Sophia steps back out of the shadows and into the blinding light of the noonday sun once more. It’s a natural reaction, one coming from a desire for self-preservation.
“No,” the woman calls out. Desperation echoes in her voice.
Sophia’s first instinct is to run. She knows she should leave while she still can, but she can’t turn her back on her people. And yet, who are these people? The men are wearing dark suits, but they’re torn and dirty. They’re not farmers. The women are wearing long skirts and necklaces. It seems they’re from one of the cities of the plains. The smell of piss and shit hangs in the air, telling her they’ve been here for days. Boots have left impressions in the mixture of blood, dirt and straw, marking where guards have trodden the cobblestone floor of the barn.
Although the world may call these people Greek, that’s a Roman term. They’re Hellenes, or descendants of Deucalion and Pyrrha, survivors of the great flood. But it’s more than that. Hellas comes from the word selas, meaning bright or radiant. All cultures have gods, but the Greeks have philosophers instead of prophets, and they have brought the light of reason to civilization. Sophia can no more turn away from her people than she could stop breathing.
Sophia’s brother is a communist. Niko thinks he’s doing what’s right for the people, but what he doesn’t realize is that he’s suppressing them. To Sophia, it’s simple: the end never justifies the means. If those who aren’t convinced by communism need to die, then communism is weak.
She looks around. Sophia is worried she’s about to be spotted by a guard. Deep within her, compassion stirs. If this were her tied and bound, she’d want someone to care. And this is what the Oracle doesn’t understand. Or perhaps it does. Perhaps it understands human nature all too well, and yet for her, the future isn’t static. The future unfolds based on decisions, which in turn are based on values. And Sophia honors her people. She has to fight for them, not with fists or guns, but with reason and freedom.
A thin trail of blue smoke drifts with the wind, curling around the far corner of the stone building. The slight haze tells her someone’s sitting there in the shade, but there’s no talking. Perhaps there’s only one guard. If she can free enough of the prisoners, they have a good chance of rushing the guard and overpowering them.
Sophia opens the heavy wooden door. The hinges squeak. Heads turn. Eyes watch her from the darkness. Muffled cries echo softly. Men squirm on the ground, flexing against the ropes binding their hands and feet. Sophia raises her finger to her lips, urging quiet.
Looking around, she sees dried blood staining the wooden supports between the stalls within the stables. This isn’t the first time people have been held here and tortured. Given how far the barn is below the main road, she doubts it is visible among the trees. There’s an old dirt track leading to the stream beyond the barn, but it winds back and forth, giving anyone watching the approaches plenty of time to prepare for someone driving down from the road. Backwater places like this probably haven’t seen German boots. They tend to stick to the main roads and villages, being wary of ambushes. This has to be a resistance stronghold used by the communists.
The woman Sophia saw from the door is old. Her hair is grey. Wrinkles line her cheeks. She holds her bound hands out to Sophia, urging her to untie her.
Sophia crouches. Her fingernails pick at the threads of rope, working them loose. If she can free one person, together they can free another two, and then four, and so on. By her estimate, she can have everyone untied within a few minutes. And then what? Together, they’re going to have to rush their captors, but there are probably only one or two guards. Then, she must go. She can’t take anyone with her. Sophia doesn’t know where she’s going anyway. In her mind, she has some vague notion of reaching the British in Athens, but that is over a hundred miles away. For now, she needs to free this woman.
Once the rope falls from the woman’s hands, the old lady starts working on the rope around her feet. Sophia moves on to the man beside her. His eyes plead for mercy. Sophia starts by pulling the gag down around his neck, allowing him to talk.
“Thank you.”
“Shhh,” she says, clawing at the rope bound around his wrists.
The woman beside her frees her feet. Instead of crouching and untying the young woman opposite her, she gets up, rushes to the barn door and throws it open. Sunlight streams in.
“No,” Sophia says, reaching for her, but unable to grab her.
The door slams into the outside wall.
The woman runs for the olive grove. Dust kicks up from beneath her shoes. There’s shouting outside. The man Sophia’s helping manages to wriggle his hands free from the ropes. He snatches at the rope binding his feet, swearing and cursing.
Sophia can’t take her eyes off the old woman as she reaches the trees.
A shot rings out, breaking like thunder in the clear blue sky. The woman’s arms fly into the air. Her legs give way beneath her. She crumples to the dirt and rocks, having been shot in the back.
There are two entrances to the barn, set on either side of the old building. Sophia sprints for the far door, knowing the soldier will come through the open door behind her. As she runs, arms reach for her, grabbing at her, tearing her skirt. They’re bound, but their fingers are like the thorny branches of a thicket, snagging her, slowing her down.
Outside, there’s the roar of a truck pulling up. The smell of burnt oil wafts through the air. There’s talking and yelling. Soldiers jump from the back of the truck. Orders are issued.
Sophia reaches the far door. It’s locked. She shakes the handle in frustration. A chain on the other side rattles. The old wooden door opens just enough for her to reach an arm through the gap, but not enough to squeeze through. There’s another gap at the top of the door, allowing horses to stick their heads out. Sophia clambers up the wooden bracing on the inside of the door, using it to climb higher, wanting to squeeze over the upper edge of the door. She gets one arm over the top and is about to swing her legs over when someone runs up to her with a rifle in both hands. They’re not in uniform. They must be part of the communist resistance. Sophia goes to say something, to plead for mercy, when the wooden butt of the rifle is slammed into her forehead.
She falls backwards, but she never hits the cobblestone floor. Several other fighters grab her, hauling her back into the shadows as she screams. In anguish, Sophia yells. She screams aloud, calling out for the only person she trusts.
“Karl!”
The Village of Delphi
Trudging along beneath the olive trees, Karl skirts the edge of the ruins of the Temple of Athena on the south side of the road. The ancient town of Delphi lies to the north west, several hundred yards further up the slope. The whole archaeological site spans the best part of a mile and must have been spectacular in its day. Now, it’s rare to see a wall reaching above waist height. A handful of weathered stone columns still tower over the land, but they’re far from defiant. They speak of a civilization lost to time. It strikes Karl that the past offers only stones and manuscripts. Beyond that, it’s as though it never existed at all.
Karl keeps to the lower walls forming embankments, using them for cover. He keeps to the shadows.
Reality is cruel. Karl didn’t ask for this, and yet, here he is—the enemy. No one chooses to be born, let alone when they’re born, where they’re born or to which parents, in one culture or another. It strikes him that his life has never really been his own. He read widely as a young teen, but he was reading other people’s thoughts. He was educated by others, molded by others, squeezed and shaped by others. The passion he felt for the Führer and the Third Reich was never his. Others decided what he should think and feel. And he went along with it like every other dumb bastard in history.
Karl comes to a halt beside the staggered grassy terraces of the outdoor gymnasium set between the Temple of Athena and that of Apollo. The ruins of Delphi are visible on the distant hillside. The Spring of Kastalia is less than a hundred yards away, further up the ravine.
Karl is curious about the prophecies of the Oracle. As tempting as it is to focus on the spectacular, seeing the future as though it were happening in real time, the thing Karl finds most interesting is the progressive nature of the prophecies he’s seen.
Why wasn’t he shown the village burning by the sea while he was back in the cave? Why is it only now that the Oracle shows him sailing out into the Mediterranean? Karl wonders if it knew back then. He suspects the changing circumstances lead to an updated vision, and for him, that calls into question the prophecies of the Oracle overall. Is it really seeing the future? Or is it guessing?
Using physics, Karl knows he can predict the future in a crude manner. Fire a cannon with a specific amount of powder at a certain angle, and before the trigger is pulled, a mathematician can calculate precisely where the cannonball will land. That’s a prediction, but there’s nothing mystical about it. Is that what this alien artifact is doing, but on a grander scale? To Karl’s mind, this is a more reasonable explanation than invoking some divine ability to see into the future. Or is the Oracle somehow able to sense how time will unravel? To someone in medieval times, a voice speaking over a radio would seem like magic. Is that what the Oracle’s doing? Playing on the superstitions of humans, who have always longed to know what the future holds? From astrology to fortune tellers, the future has always teased and tormented people—it’s the need for certainty amidst utter uncertainty. Is the Oracle exploiting that weakness in humanity?
It’s hot trudging through the Greek wilderness under the noonday sun.
Karl takes off his Wehrmacht shirt, stripping down to his bloodied singlet, but it’s more than for mere convenience. He’s disgusted with himself. He’s a soldier in the German Army, and what was once a point of pride is now repulsive. Having seen his life unfold while holding the Omphalos has given him a unique perspective. Being interrogated by the Oracle has broadened his mind.
He rests his hands on the lower stone retaining wall of the palaestra. From his Greek studies, he knows this was the bathhouse for the stadium. Beyond, he can see roughly a hundred smaller columns reaching up to waist height, forming a colonnade set in a straight line, marking the running track. Javelins would have soared through the air along with athletes throwing the discus, but unlike the modern Olympics, the gymnasium was also used as a center for education and for teaching philosophy. The Greeks were concerned with building culture. It hurts Karl to realize that the country he loves is doing the opposite. Instead of building culture, Germany is destroying its own. It’s laying waste to Europe, swarming over the land like a plague of locusts.
The whimsical, random nature of consciousness fascinates Karl. Why him? Why is he here now? Karl could have just as easily lived and died thousands of years ago among these ruins. If he had a choice, that is what he would have chosen: to be part of building something great rather than killing and destroying in the name of the Führer. And the future lies open—the Oracle be damned. For thousands of years to come, these limestone slabs will lie here revealing the outline of an ancient village that lived and died long ago. They whisper about the past, and someone else will walk on these stones. And to them, the Second World War will be something akin to the legend of the Oracle itself. And him? He’ll be gone. Just one more ghost wandering among the ruins.
Karl keeps his head down. He carries his rifle by the center of the stock. Stones crunch beneath his boots. His only chance is to sneak past the communists and rejoin his troops. As much as he doesn’t want to, that’s his only option. His life choices are to withdraw with the Wehrmacht or die.
The roar of a gasoline engine carries on the breeze. Karl crouches, hiding from sight. Three trucks come into view, passing along the road, barely visible through the trees. The communists are bringing in reinforcements.
Karl crouches beneath a cypress tree where the shadows are darkest. He leans in close to the trunk, blending in with the wood. He presses his rifle vertically against the tree, wanting to hide the rifle’s shape from view while still being able to bring it to bear quickly if needed. Mentally, he’s thinking about his options. He’s no more than forty feet from the gravel road, but he’s below it, giving any communist fighters the advantage. If they jump out of the canvas rear of the trucks, there will be dozens of them on him within seconds. The smart option would be to run back through the ruins, as that’s a clear path, but that would lead them to Sophia, and he cannot do that. Instead, he decides he’ll take them further down the ravine, cutting through heavy bushes and shrubs. It’s steep, which will slow him, but he will not risk exposing Sophia to danger.
Karl’s heart thumps within his chest. His ribs ache. Blood seeps from the bandages, staining his white singlet. One by one, the trucks rumble past, and it’s then he realizes that they’re Opels. They’re German trucks. They have the distinct black and grey Balkenkreuz cross on their doors. They’re part of the withdrawal.
Excited, Karl scrambles up the steep incline. He clambers over the stone wall and onto the gravel road, but they’ve already driven by. Dust swirls in the air. He waves his hands over his head, calling out and trying to get someone’s attention, but the last truck rounds the corner, disappearing further up the hillside.
“Ah, damn,” he mutters, picking up his rifle from where he rested it on the stone wall while climbing over.
Karl walks along in the blistering sunlight. Sweat mats his hair, running down his neck. He shoulders his rifle and keeps to the shade of trees hanging over the road, but not to hide from communist fighters—it’s the sun that’s oppressive.
He marches toward the Spring of Kastalia. The professor’s body lies in the recessed parking area on the side of the road near the body of the private. To see life reduced to a corpse rotting in the sun is heartbreaking. The retreating German soldiers should have stopped to collect the dead. That they didn’t tells him fear has replaced honor.
Karl can’t bury the two of them. He doesn’t have a shovel, and even if he did, all he could manage would be a shallow grave. He drags the bodies off the road and lays them next to each other. They may have been strangers in life, but they’re forever bound in death. He rests their arms across each of their chests and gives them what little dignity he can, covering the professor’s face with his hat and the private’s face with his helmet.
He unbuttons the dead soldier’s shirt and looks at his Erkennungsmarke, a small aluminum disc hanging around his neck. Karl’s heart breaks to read the cryptic figures punched into the sheet metal with a hammer, knowing he has the same kind of disc resting on his chest.
1452
5./ Na. Ers. A. 2. P.
— — — — — —
5./ Na. Ers. A. 2. P.
1452
As the Erkennungsmarke is made from thin sheet metal with the characters punched by hand to slightly different depths, the letters are uneven, with some being higher than others or set on a slight angle. And that’s him. That’s all that’s left of him. No name. Just a number and a service unit. And a P—protestant—for anyone wanting to give him the last rites or say a prayer for his soul.
The Erkennungsmarke is perforated, allowing Karl to twist it back and forth and break off the lower half. As the information is repeated twice, he can leave the top portion with the body and take the bottom section with him to report the death, assuming he isn’t killed along the way. And if he is killed, this man’s Erkennungsmarke will probably be buried in Karl’s pocket, and his family will never know how or where he died.
Karl drinks from the unnamed soldier’s canteen. The water is tepid and tastes like tin, but he needs fluids. He takes some spare ammo already loaded into a metal clip and two of the soldier’s Stielhandgranaten stick grenades, sticking them into his belt.
There’s distant gunfire, but of course, there’s distant gunfire—it’s war. Karl needs to focus. Volleys of shots break through the air, and then the countryside falls unnaturally still.
The quickest way back to the modern village of Delphi is to follow the road, but Karl’s worried about the communist snipers in the hills. The thought of a bullet tearing through the back of his spine without warning doesn’t exactly thrill him. Rather than following the road, he trudges up through the scrub to the cliff where they found the source for the Spring of Kastalia. He remembers a goat track near the cave entrance. If he follows that, it will lead up over the bluff, taking him above the ruins of ancient Delphi and to the village on the far side of the hill. Without a German helmet and his army shirt, he’s hoping any communists that spot him creeping through the wilderness will mistake him for one of their own. That might buy him some time, although one good look at his hair and his sunburnt face will give him away.
As tempting as it is to rush, Karl takes his time, moving no more than ten to fifteen feet in a short dash, resting beneath trees and watching for movement further up the slope. There’s more gunfire, but it’s not directed at him. The wind rustles the trees. Birds soar in the sky, ignoring an entire world at war. As he crosses the ridge, he sees men in the ruins. Although it’s difficult to tell at a distance, they don’t look like German soldiers. One of them is pulling a mule along behind him. He could be a villager, but it could equally be a communist leading a mule carrying ammo on its back. Karl watches them for a while, waiting until he’s confident they haven’t seen him, and then continues on, creeping through the brush.
