The Oracle, page 26
“Um, a couple of trucks and an armored car.”
“But they’re not there anymore?”
“No, they left yesterday.”
“Yesterday? You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Karl says. “They were gone by mid-morning, and the communists arrived by midday.”
The captain and the lieutenant look at each other, and Karl knows he has them. He has information that’s valuable to them because it is so recent.
“Which way did the Germans go?”
Karl points at one of the valleys on the map, saying, “They headed north through Amfissa.”
“And you’re sure about this? They didn’t follow the coastal road to the west?”
“No. I saw burned-out armored cars on the road to Amfissa last night.”
One of the sailors beside the captain is taking notes on a paper pad.
“What else? Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“Ah, no. Sorry, I was running for my life. The Germans were pulling out of all the towns within the valley. I heard the British had landed in Athens. And I saw a British fighter over the Gulf of Corinth.”
The captain sweeps his hand over the rugged mountainous terrain on the map, saying, “So this area. It’s no longer in German hands?”
“No.”
“It’s held by the communists?”
“Yes,” Karl says. “They were lining people up against the wall and shooting them.”
“And you?” the lieutenant. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen, sir. I turn seventeen next month.”
“And how did you end up in Greece?”
“My mother’s English. My father is Greek. We moved to Delphi before the war.”
“And where is your family now?”
Karl lowers his head. His shoulders sink. He wonders about what has happened to his family since he left Germany. What will happen to his family when Berlin lies in smoldering ruins? Karl decides to describe Sophia’s family to the captain.
He swallows a knot in his throat. His words may be a lie, but the emotion in his voice is real. “My father was killed when the Italians arrived. Then my mother, my brother, my sister… they’re all dead.”
“I’m sorry,” the captain says. “But thank you. The information you’ve given us is invaluable. We have very little knowledge about what’s happening in central Greece.”
With downturned lips, Karl nods.
“Let’s get you to the doctor,” the lieutenant says.
As they walk down the narrow corridor, Karl wonders about the ethics of betraying his homeland. He’s a traitor. He’s giving aid to the enemy. But is he? Enemy is such a loose term. Humans fracture into tribes and band together around language, culture, and geography, and then it’s us versus them. We’re good. They’re bad—evil. They must be. We couldn’t be the bad guys. That’s absurd. And yet, in the space of a couple of days, Karl has seen war through the eyes of the Wehrmacht, a bunch of innocent villagers, priests and monks in a monastery, the Greek communists and now the British. Far from seeing differences, he sees how they’re all eerily similar. The camaraderie he felt in the Wehrmacht isn’t any different from the sentiment shared by the British sailors he’s met. As someone who needs glasses to read, it strikes him as strange to realize that even those people with 20/20 vision are shortsighted.
“In here,” the lieutenant says. He stands by the door and talks quietly with the doctor.
Karl sits on a narrow bed covered by a stiff, starched white cotton sheet.
“Let’s take a look at you,” the doctor says. Karl lifts his arms as the damp bandage around his chest is unwrapped. A male nurse cleans the wound with a gauze pad dipped in diluted iodine. Karl looks down. The skin on his chest is angry, being red and sensitive to touch. Pus oozes from a scab.
“Nasty,” the doctor says. “And you were wounded yesterday?”
Karl nods, grimacing as the doctor picks at the wound with a scalpel, getting a good look at the festering sore.
“Well, it’s fresh,” he says, which seems to be a comment directed to the lieutenant. “I’m going to give you an injection of penicillin.”
Karl has no idea what the doctor is talking about. Penicillin is a word he’s never heard before. He nods in agreement, making as though he knows what the doctor is describing.
The doctor turns to the nurse, saying, “Sprinkle some sulfanilamide in the wound and bandage him. I’ll prepare the injection.”
Karl watches the doctor with a sense of fascination and horror. On one hand, it’s interesting to see a British doctor at work, but the sight of a large steel needle and massive syringe is alarming.
“This might sting,” the doctor says, pushing the needle into Karl’s left shoulder muscle. Sting? It feels worse than being shot. Karl grits his teeth. His fingers grip the edge of the bed. He grimaces as a cold fluid swirls within the muscle on his arm.
“There. All better,” the doctor says. Karl rubs his shoulder. It feels as though his arm is about to drop off.
The nurse finishes cleaning the wound and applying a fresh bandage. Karl lifts his hands as the nurse wraps a crepe bandage around his ribs.
“Thank you.”
“And we have some clean clothes for you,” the lieutenant says as another sailor hands him some folded clothes with a pair of polished black boots stacked on top.
Karl feels overwhelmed. Tears well up in his eyes. They trickle down his cheeks.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now,” the lieutenant says, but he doesn’t understand. He’s the enemy. The two of them are supposed to be shooting at each other. They’ve been told they should kill each other for reasons that escape Karl’s young mind. He hopes the Oracle has seen the contradiction that is humanity, because Karl is left stunned by the kindness of these strangers.
The doctor says, “We’ll let you get changed.”
They leave Karl in the cramped medical quarters, closing the steel hatch but not locking it.
Karl strips down and gets dressed. They’ve given him boxer underwear along with a pair of blue overalls. The boots are a little big, but it seems someone has anticipated the discrepancy, as they’ve given him two pairs of woolen socks. As tempting as it is to put his old boots back on, he looks down at his wrinkled feet and his soggy leather boots and goes with the British boots. By wearing double socks and pulling the laces tight, he gets them to fit, but it feels as if he’s wearing the boots of a giant.
Karl dumps his old clothes in a trash can and opens the heavy metal hatch in the doorway.
“Hey, that looks better,” the lieutenant says. “Oh, and we’re in the process of raising the Argos.”
“My boat?” Karl replies, feeling a sense of panic welling up within him. The Omphalos was draped over the steel rod supporting the rudder. It should stay in place as the boat is turned, but the possibility of it being lost fills Karl with dread.
“This way.”
Karl follows the lieutenant. He’s nervous. On the surface, both the lieutenant and the captain seem to believe his story about being English, but the two armed guards never stray far from him. It’s clear they’ve been ordered not to let him out of their sight. His boots clomp along the corridor and out onto the deck. Leaning over the side of the warship, he can see that his fishing boat has been rolled over. The engineering team has swung a large metal crane sideways over the edge of the ship and raised the bow of his boat. Water runs from the hull back into the sea. From where he is, Karl can’t see the rudder. His throat closes over, making it difficult to breathe as he thinks about losing the Omphalos, but what else could he have done? He couldn’t risk showing the Omphalos to the British. He had to leave it. He only hopes it will remain in place until he can retrieve it.
A sailor comes up to the lieutenant, holding a canvas bag. He whispers something to the officer as he hands the bag to him. The two of them peer inside it for a moment as they chat.
“I have a question for you,” the lieutenant says, leading Karl to one side and resting the bag on a wooden crate stacked on the rear deck of the destroyer. “One of our divers found this while righting your boat.”
Karl swallows hard. His heart is thumping in his throat. The lieutenant reaches into the canvas bag and pulls out a familiar rope bag. The Omphalos glistens in the sunlight. The lieutenant returns it to the canvas, leaving it partially exposed, and sets it down on the crate. The two armed sailors stand not more than twenty feet away, watching them with rifles shouldered.
“Can you explain this?” the lieutenant asks, pointing at the golden orb glistening within an old knotted-rope bag, with folds of the canvas bag around it.
“It’s not stolen,” Karl says, struggling with what to say.
“What is it?”
“It’s an artifact, an heirloom,” Karl says, being honest. “It’s Greek. It belongs in Delphi.”
“Then why was it on your boat?”
“I was protecting it,” Karl says, pleading with him. “From the communists. You have to believe me. They were going to steal it.”
“And you just happened to steal it first?”
“No, it’s not like that,” Karl says. “Look, if I were a thief, would there be just one artifact? Why would I steal just one thing? I’d steal everything I could.”
“It looks valuable,” the lieutenant says.
“To Greece,” Karl replies. “It belongs in Greece.”
“So you were simply keeping it safe?”
“Until I could return it, yes.” Karl points at the bag, saying, “You want to know why I’m out here in the middle of the sea? That’s why I’m out here.”
The lieutenant pauses.
Karl’s mind races through the possibilities from here. He’s standing on the deck of a British warship, but from this moment onward, the future splinters, dividing into thousands of possible directions, only one of which will come to pass. Karl may not have the vision of the Oracle, but he knows this is a pivotal point in time. Never again will he pass through this moment. Whatever decisions he makes, he’ll never get to redo them. He gets one shot at being right. If the Omphalos ends up in the hands of British engineers or American scientists, he’ll never see it again. The thought of letting Sophia down makes him feel sick.
And what will the British and the Americans make of an artifact from another world? What will they do if the power of prophecy is laid at their feet? What will they do when they realize it’s driven by an extraterrestrial intelligence far more advanced than any human society?
Even if Karl is right and the combined might of the Omphalos and the Oracle is more probable than prophetic, it could still provide insights into the future that would otherwise be veiled. Could they use that knowledge to steer a new course? That’s always been the dream of those who sought the counsel of the Oracle. Or are there other secrets hidden within the Omphalos, like the insights that lead to the great scientific advancements of the age: relativity and quantum mechanics? Could some other revolutionary technology become apparent when scientists look at the Omphalos under a microscope? And would that be for better or for worse? How would that discovery shape the future? What course would it put humanity on? To Karl’s mind, human progress is a complex weave of advances and exploitation.
“And I’m just supposed to believe you,” the lieutenant says.
“Look, I get it,” Karl replies, scrambling for ideas. “You look at me and you don’t know who I am. You don’t know if I’m lying. You can’t know. It’s impossible for you to know what’s true. You have to trust someone, right? But who? Me? Your instinct? Your crew? Life is trust. And yet it’s not just a question of who you trust, but why.”
The lieutenant is blunt. “You ask for trust and yet you’re lying to me, aren’t you?”
Karl can’t maintain eye contact with the lieutenant, which is as good as an admission of guilt.
“Who are you? Really?” the lieutenant asks, resting his hand on the pistol in the holster on his hip. “And this time, I want the truth.”
Karl swallows the lump welling up in his throat. He looks nervously at the two armed sailors watching them. He’s desperate to escape but can’t flee from a warship. He replies in a soft voice.
“I’m Private Karl Meier, Infanterie-Regiment 91, Gebirgs-Division, XXII Mountain Army Corps, Heeresgruppe E, Wehrmacht. I—I’m a deserter. I abandoned my unit in Delphi shortly before they pulled out. Everything else I’ve said… Everything I told you is true.”
Strangely, Karl feels relieved confessing to being a German deserter. To his surprise, the officer appears to accept what he’s saying and relaxes a little, removing his hand from where it rests on the butt of his gun.
“I need to report this,” the lieutenant says.
Karl feels his heart sink.
“This,” he replies, gesturing with his hands on either side of the Omphalos, pleading with the lieutenant. “This is not what you think.”
“And what do I think?”
“That it’s stolen treasure, but it’s not.”
“It’s out of the ordinary.”
“Oh, it certainly is,” Karl says with eyes that go wide. He leans toward the lieutenant, saying, “Touch it.”
“What?”
“You want to know if I’m lying? Grab it. Hold it in your hand. You’ll see.”
The lieutenant’s eyes narrow. He looks at Karl carefully, but there’s no animosity, only curiosity.
“What will I see?”
Karl laughs, which seems to take the lieutenant off guard. “Oh, what will you see? Hah. Everything. This is the Omphalos. In Greek mythology, it marked the center of the world. It’s the gateway to the Oracle.”
“You talk about the Oracle as though it’s real.”
“Oh, it’s real,” Karl says, but he doesn’t add anything more. He doesn’t need to. With both hands, he gestures to the crumpled canvas bag sitting on the wooden crate. “Go on. Touch it. Hold it in your hand. And you’ll understand why I’m here. You’ll see I’m not lying.”
The lieutenant reaches inside the rope bag lying on the canvas. The two armed sailors watch with interest. Their rifles are shouldered, but they rest their hands on the wooden butts hanging down below their waists, ready to swing their rifles down and bring them to bear at a moment’s notice.
The lieutenant pulls out the Omphalos. He grimaces. Golden prickles rise on the surface of the strange alien device. Patterns swirl across the orb. The lieutenant grabs his right hand with his left to steady it. It’s as though he’s struggling under the weight of the orb, but Karl knows he’s already gone. Although the lieutenant is standing on the rear deck of a warship in the middle of the vast Mediterranean Sea, Karl knows that right now, he’s a child back in England. The lieutenant’s life is flickering before him like the pages of a flipbook being thumbed by a schoolkid. His mouth opens. His eyes roll into the back of his head. He staggers, barely able to stand.
Although the sailors making up the armed escort are behind the lieutenant and can’t see his face, they see him falter. One of them goes to grab him.
“No,” Karl says with his arm outstretched. “Leave him.”
Curiously, they obey.
If Sophia were here, or even Niko, they wouldn’t understand what Karl is doing or why. They’d think he was mad giving the Omphalos to the lieutenant, but the reality is, the British officer already has it. The Omphalos is already under his command. Karl’s only hope is to use the Omphalos itself as a distraction.
Karl already knows what must happen. He accepts that there’s only one possible outcome now.
As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, Karl understands the danger of the Oracle. He understands that the future is not a toy. Time isn’t a reference book in a library, revealing the history that’s about to unfold. The future is dynamic. Chaotic. Dangerous. No one should know what’s about to happen. It’s enough to live in the moment. Humans manipulate nature, always wanting to gain an advantage, to change things, seeking the high ground, never content with where they are, but the future is uncharted country. The future needs to be explored, not exploited. When it comes to the Oracle, it’s not what Karl wants that’s important, not even what Sophia wants, or the professor. No one should hold such power. And for Karl, the lieutenant provides him with an opportunity to test his theory, to see if someone—anyone—can be trusted with this knowledge.
The lieutenant grabs the wooden crate, steadying himself. Karl understands. He’s gaining control. At first, the Oracle has the advantage. It surveys the mind like an engineer examines a ship in dry dock, but then the person holding the Omphalos gains some sway over the device. Sophia did that numerous times. Karl’s seen the future. Twice. And now the lieutenant is commanding the power of the Oracle through the Omphalos, but he lacks the context. He has no idea what he’s wielding. He doesn’t understand its history or significance. Or it’s extraterrestrial origins.
The lieutenant drops the golden Omphalos on top of the crate and withdraws his hand as though it were bitten by a dog. He shakes his fingers, stepping back slightly, perplexed by the golden orb glistening in the sunlight.
“That…”
“That,” Karl says, echoing the lieutenant’s words and measuring his response with care. Karl is curious. For now, it’s not the Oracle that’s in control. It’s him. The alien intelligence may think it commands humanity, but it is observed by them. And Karl is not the first, of that he’s sure. All the high priestesses of Pythia knew. They chose to keep the Oracle secret for a reason. Its prophecies could be known, but not its mechanisms. They insulated humanity. And Karl thinks he understands why.
“I—I saw everything. My life.”
“And?”
“And my girlfriend back home. She… She’s now my wife. My future wife. Children yet to be born have smiled in my arms!”
“Now you see,” Karl says, sensing the lieutenant is a good man. “Now you know what I’m protecting. You understand.”
The lieutenant nods. He’s sincere and professional. He’s in a position of authority, but what does he make of the power of the Oracle? Does he understand its danger? Can he resist the temptation to exploit its visions?
