The Oracle, page 17
Karl feels his trigger finger relax. It’s involuntary. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. He’s never wanted to kill anyone. Death is an insult to life.
Sophia’s hands are still bound together. They hang in front of her torn, dirty dress. She looks dazed. Dried blood sticks to the side of her head, matting her hair. Her shoulders are stooped. She’s in shock. She lowers her head. Long strands of hair hide her eyes. Her brother’s fate is in Karl’s hands, but she won’t fight Karl—and that disarms him. His hands feel weak. The muscles in his shoulder fail, and his arms sag. The barrel of the gun falls away, and he stands up, leaving the Luger pointing at the dirt by his scuffed boots.
Niko dares not move.
Sophia says, “Thank you,” and Karl understands that she means for everything. All he can do is nod.
With his thumb, Karl feels for the circular, machined metal button above the trigger of the Luger. He presses it firmly, feeling the safety click into place, and slips the Luger into the small of his back.
Niko looks relieved. Sophia walks over to her brother, talking softly to him. He looks genuinely shocked and doesn’t seem to notice that her hands are still bound. He’s thinking only of himself. It’s easy to be violent. Being on the receiving end of violence is entirely different, and it strikes Karl that Niko has been the bully but never the bullied. The young Greek man rubs his sore wrist.
Necessity has shaped Karl.
Having spent years in boarding schools, seeing his parents only on weekends and between semesters, hardened the young German boy. Karl may be slight and weak, but he understands that survival demands a surge of absolute speed, and that’s what Niko failed to realize. Bullies are cowards with bluster. Out of necessity, the bullied are survivors.
For Karl, survival is a matter of necessity. He learned the hard way that survival demands a burst of absolute and unrelenting effort. Back in Germany, when watching Goethe’s Faust at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, it wasn’t the existence of Mephistopheles, an incarnation of Satan, that felt implausible to the young, thirteen-year-old Karl. For him, it was the way Faust fled the prison.
Faust was a play unfolding in a theater, but the actor merely ran from the prison bars to the stairs leading backstage—and that wasn’t believable. No one runs from danger. At boarding school, Karl had learned not to run. Running is never enough. To escape bullies, Karl had to burst into an absolute sprint that would have left even the American Jessie Owens still crouching in the blocks of the 100-meter final at the Berlin Olympics. And that’s what Niko doesn’t understand. Survival demands that the legs and lungs burn before they tire. That’s what Karl felt running from Delphi. It’s the surge of energy he felt when he lunged at Niko. Even as he reaches down to pick up his rifle, his body is coiled like a snake, ready to strike. He slings the Mauser over his shoulder. Karl may look relaxed. He isn’t. With all he’s been through, Karl doubts he’ll ever truly relax again.
“Here,” Karl says to Sophia, with a sense of tenderness that is out of place in war. He holds out his hand. She looks dazed. Coming under fire will do that to people. Karl sees her reeling from the shock he felt climbing out of the gully after the truck plunged off the gravel road. Mere seconds of his life caused him to age several years. And in the same manner, Sophia has gone from being a teenage girl to a woman.
Niko slumps to the dirt with his back pressed against the trunk of the gnarly old olive tree.
Sophia holds her hands out. Karl picks at the rope. He has no idea what kind of knot has been used, but it’s bound tight. Her fingers are pale, being drained of blood. He works the knot loose, getting his fingernails into the strands and picking the bound yarn apart. Once the rope comes loose, the tension slackens, and Sophia shakes her hands free.
Further down the slope, communist fighters are moving through the trees, hunting for prisoners fleeing for the coast, which is no more than a couple of miles away at the base of the hills. If they’ve noticed the three of them, they must assume they’re part of the movement, as they’re not fleeing. Given that the three of them are in the shade, they may have missed them entirely. The communists stick to the road and the lower regions of the valley as they hunt their victims.
The tracks to the north lead to a series of cliffs running along the edge of the mountain plateau. There’s a monastery in the distance, but the road is a dead end. Besides, humans are predictable—fight or flight. No one just hangs around as though nothing has happened, so the three of them have probably been overlooked.
Sophia sits beside her brother. Karl positions himself so that he can see them and watch the approaches from the road below. He sits on a boulder roughly fifteen feet away, sheltering in the shade of another tree. He’s close enough to hear anything that’s said without being intrusive.
As Sophia and Niko talk, Karl takes stock of his ammunition. He cycles the bolt and flicks through the rounds. Unloading and reloading the internal magazine not only gives him an accurate count, but it also allows him to clear out dust, dirt and grime that could cause a blockage. He smiles to himself. Perhaps he is a good soldier after all. He does the same with the Luger. German pistols use different types of ammo from the rifles, so they’re not interchangeable. The news isn’t good. He has three Spitzgeschoß schwer, 8mm heavy-pointed rounds for his rifle and five smaller 9mm rounds for the Luger. With sarcasm ringing within his mind, Karl acknowledges he can be a good soldier eight more times.
“Why him? Why the German?” Niko asks Sophia. “Why this German?”
“I—I don’t know,” Sophia replies. “He’s… I’ve seen him before.”
“Before?”
“You need to tell him,” Karl says, leaning his rifle against a boulder as he interrupts their conversation.
“Tell me what?” Niko asks his sister.
Karl says, “You don’t know who she is, do you?”
“My sister?”
“Your sister is the High Priestess of Pythia.”
“What is this nonsense?” Niko asks, turning toward his sister. “What lie has this German fed you?”
“It’s not a lie,” Sophia says softly.
“The bag,” Karl says, getting to what he considers to be the heart of the issue. “Where is the bag?”
Niko is still caught up on the earlier statement. “You are no priestess.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Sophia says.
Karl explains what he feels Sophia can’t bring herself to say. “Your sister is part of a lineage stretching back thousands of years—only ever passed from woman to woman.”
“What is he talking about?”
Sophia lowers her gaze. She’s intimidated by her brother. It seems she knows she’ll never be heard by him.
Karl says, “The Oracle of Delphi is protected by the High Priestess of Pythia, holder of the Omphalos, connecting her to the center of the world.”
“That’s a legend, a myth.”
“It’s true,” Sophia says.
“You? A priestess? The high priestess?” Niko laughs with scorn. There’s bitterness in his voice—disdain.
“Oh, it’s real,” Karl says. “The German High Command sent me here to assist Professor Johannes Schmidt in the recovery of the Oracle.”
“The dead man on the road,” Niko says with at least some awareness of what has transpired in the hours before the German withdrawal.
“Yes.”
Sophia says, “I know this is difficult for you to accept, Niko, but we must recover the Omphalos.”
“The relic? The golden one?”
“Yes,” Karl says, paying particularly close attention to Niko’s reaction, not trusting him, knowing that his body language will speak more clearly than any words. “You didn’t touch it, did you?”
“It stung,” he says.
“And?” Sophia asks.
“And I put it back in the bag.”
“Where is it now?” Karl asks.
“Kirra,” Niko replies. “It’s in a truck heading to Kirra on the coast.”
Sophia asks, “Why is it being taken to the coast?”
Sheepishly, Niko says. “Art, paintings, statues, jewelry, gold, cultural artifacts—they’re all being taken there.”
“By the communists?”
“Yes.”
“And then to Russia?” Karl says.
“For the good of the Greek people,” Sophia says with sarcasm dripping from her lips.
“The British hold the port of Athens,” is all Niko will say in his defense.
“We need to get it back,” Karl says.
“No, no, no,” Niko says. “You don’t understand. It is being guarded by a dozen men.”
“But we have something they won’t expect,” Sophia says.
“What?” Niko asks.
“You.”
“Me?”
“You’re a trusted member of the mountain guerrillas.”
“But me? What can I do?” Niko asks. “You don’t understand. They won’t let anyone near the treasure.”
Karl says, “But if you found another treasure…”
The Council of Pythia
Winter is drawing to an end.
Already, the binary star system is looming close, with the lead blue-white star cutting through the darkness, giving dawn and dusk an eerie glow. Spring is coming. It will take some time before the oxygen and nitrogen ices lying on the surface thaw, but their transition from solid to liquid and then into a gaseous state requires only a handful of gradients. Once they’ve filled the atmosphere, other gases will follow, and a runaway warming cycle will begin, thawing the glaciers of water ice that seal the entrances to the caves of Pythia.
Plants are the first to awaken, with their seeds having been dormant throughout winter. After detecting life on almost a hundred exo-worlds, the Pythians have accumulated a vast catalogue of biosignatures. The most common is photosynthesis. It seems to the Pythians that the immense lengths of time during which carbon cycles through a planet’s atmosphere, land and oceans across billions of orbits make photosynthesis an easy target for natural selection. With stars radiating massive amounts of energy, the atmospheric mix of carbon dioxide and water teases natural selection with the prospect of easily forming glucose as an energy store. And from the observations of the Pythians, photosynthesis evolves to exploit that opportunity time and time again throughout the galaxy.
Although the origins of life on Pythia are lost to the mists of time, observing life on other worlds at different stages of evolutionary development has allowed the scientists of Pythia to establish a Theory of Life. Far from the religious and superstitious leanings of their own cultural origin stories, they have been able to observe how life follows common paths throughout the cosmos. Using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into energy-dense carbohydrates is both basic and abundant, providing a broad platform on which complex life can thrive.
For the Pythians, the Theory of Life is an extension of natural processes they see throughout the universe.
When it comes to all the stars in a galaxy, only a tiny minority will collapse into neutron stars. Even fewer will become black holes. And this highlights what the Pythians call the strata of exceptionalism—the more radical the transformation, the fewer stars will undergo that process. All stars use fusion to produce energy, but not all stars fuse to iron; fewer still draw off stellar material from a companion to go supernova, and fewer again collide with their companions to form neutron stars and black holes. This means stars naturally separate into different strata, with fewer and fewer in each category.
In the same way, all planets coalesce from stellar discs, with gravity concentrating heavy elements into their cores. Some planets are too close to their stars to retain an atmosphere, others form magnetic fields from their swirling molten cores, protecting their atmospheres, while still others have such dense gravitational distortions of spacetime that they gather immense atmospheres of super density. Excess material forms moons, asteroids and comets, and so the cycle repeats in system after system. But every so often, the temperature and pressure on a planet or moon settle in an equilibrium conducive to forming the complex molecules that underpin life.
With the exception of noble gases, atoms love to bond to each other. Most atoms are incomplete, with spare electrons in their outer shells, leaving gaps that long to be filled.
With six electrons in its outer shell, oxygen needs two more to reach a stable octet of eight, so it borrows two electrons from a pair of hydrogen atoms, and water is formed.
Carbon, though, is insanely promiscuous. It has four outer electrons and needs four more to reach a stable eight, meaning it will bond with almost anything it can, including other carbon atoms, causing an insane level of complexity to arise. The Pythians have calculated that there are more combinations of carbon than there are atoms in all of the stars throughout the entire universe! And that’s ignoring similar levels of complexity arising for silicon.
The question then arises: why life?
Why is there life in the universe at all?
Rather than wondering how life arose, Pythian scientists focused on why life arose, realizing it had to be a natural process that filled a particular chemical niche, satisfying the need atoms have to gain a complete outer electron orbital shell.
Putting aside any philosophical issues and personal convenience, life is simply the most efficient means of exploiting the chemical diversity of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Pythian biologists realized that life is astonishingly efficient at distributing atoms in long-chain molecules.
In the same way as less than 0.1% of stars turn into neutron stars and less than 0.001% of stars form black holes, only a tiny fraction of planets produce life. And just like black holes, that tiny fraction of a stupendously large number results in hundreds of thousands of planets with life.
To the Pythians, black holes are the natural result of the stratification of stars, and in the same way, life is the natural result of the stratification of planets. They’re both equally likely given the right circumstances.
Representatives of the Council of Pythia meet in the august marble chambers on the slopes of a dormant shield volcano on the same rocky plain as the Institute for First Contact. A glass dome stretches over a vast caldera that has collapsed on one side, affording views of the frozen sea. Starlight reflects off a massive ice shelf compressing the surface of the planet, covering the land and sealing the ocean. Auroras dance through the rarified atmosphere, casting a green glow on the snow. The ribbons and curtains of light that curl through the air are mesmerizing to behold. Tor Mah lies curled up near a vent pumping warm air into the frigid chamber.
Most of the volcanic caldera is filled with administrative offices. The council chamber has been built as an outdoor amphitheater, allowing starlight to glisten on the geometric shapes that make up the pressurized crystalline dome. Ordinarily, ambassadors from the forty countries that make up Pythia would be present, but only members of the scientific committee have been roused. The meeting will be recorded and automatically transcribed for the president and general assembly.
Eight Pythians slither into the front row, taking their place at tables that allow them to coil comfortably out of the aisle. Dozens of assistants support them. Like Tor Mah, the members of the scientific committee wear hoods that form a U-shape over their bodies, allowing them to flex their stomach muscles against the floor without ruffling their clothing. Their dark purple robes are ornate and adorned with precious stones that glisten in the soft light. To the uninitiated, their nautilus-like mouth tentacles appear identical, but they have individual quirks. Some are thin and expressive, pulsating as a Pythian speaks. Others tend to sway, revealing a particular Pythian’s pace of thinking and consideration. Some flush with color when surprised. Others are more muted. Above them, eye stalks rise from bulbous heads to observe the chamber.
The presiding member addresses Tor Mah and Shak Mon, who have positioned themselves on the podium facing the assembly.
“Having seen the preliminary results, you are required to provide a defense of your contention. Please state your objective.”
“Esteemed excellences,” Tor Mah begins. “Of all the worlds we have surveyed, none have shown the emergence of a civilization capable of harnessing advanced technology, but the inhabitants of THREE CAL-457-9987 are progressing at a rapid pace.”
A hologram appears before the presiding member. With a flick of his mouth tentacles, he can manipulate the image, flipping between layers of information with dexterity.
“What is your intent? Why convene the council before spring?”
“My intent is to commission a follow-up mission to be launched at perihelion when we can maximize the escape velocity. The timing will allow for a full contingent to launch on an enhanced Oracle.”
“And you felt this couldn’t wait until the thaw?”
“The possibility of missing a summer launch and waiting an entire orbital cycle seemed unwise. Given the accelerated rate of their technological progress, we should seek the earliest possible intervention.”
“Why?”
“I have concerns.”
“I am seeing detailed accounts of conflict and warlike activity,” the presiding member says.
“That is correct,” Tor Mah replies. Shak Mon had counselled him to leave this out of his presentation, but he felt transparency was important. Tor Mah didn’t want to mislead the council.
“You fear they will destroy themselves?”
“Yes.”
“Given the spacetime between us, this may have already happened.”
“Agreed,” Tor Mah says. “But it is important to realize none of this is by their own choice.”
