The oracle, p.10
The Oracle, page 10
Listening to Adolf Hitler, the Oracle can sense his underlying appeal. “Our movement…” Adolf needs the people to embrace and own a movement that is his, not theirs. “A living expression.” Living. It is only the living that can band around him and give him authority. The use of the term “eternity” blurs the distinction between his political and religious ideals.
Further forward in time, the Oracle observes how Karl is influenced by the strident politics of his era.
“The German people are no longer divided. We are one people, one Reich, under one Führer! Awake! And you, my people, rise and be proud of your fatherland!”
In any other context, such words would be banal, but the Oracle knows that unity, obedience, and pride are being used as a catalyst for war. It’s double-speak. Adolf may sound harmless, but there is darkness lurking beneath each word. His appeal to unity is a contradiction—it excludes others. It’s bigotry wrapped in patriotism. The Oracle understands that the only way to interpret anyone’s words is through their actions, and soon Hitler’s actions will speak so loudly they cannot be ignored.
The Oracle is fascinated by Karl’s sense of the war. It is aware that it only has a limited glimpse into the grand scheme and realizes that the information fed to Karl is heavily biased. He’s being swept up in the rhetoric. It strikes the Oracle that, unique among humans on this world, words hold power.
“Germany did not want war. I have made proposals... which would have spared the peoples of Europe untold suffering.”
Karl may believe what Hitler said, but the Oracle doesn’t.
Lies fascinate the Oracle. Humans are adept at their use, but like the song of the mythical sirens on the shores of Sicily, humans are lured onto the rocks by nothing but words. Lies distort the truth, hiding reality. For the Oracle, Hitler’s words are transparent. Europe wasn’t spared because he would not spare them.
While searching the depths of Private Karl Meier’s mind, the Oracle finds a broadcast from Adolf Hitler that stirred fear and dismay in the young man’s thinking.
“The German soldier has not learned to retreat. He stands, and when necessary, he dies where he stands.”
Both Karl and the Oracle see this as a rare moment of honesty from Adolf Hitler. Obedience is no longer abstract or theoretical; it’s a demand for sacrifice. Death is an order. Young Karl heard this, and yet still he enlisted; such was the cultural impetus surrounding his life. Even now, he shudders at the realization he’s been called on to give his life for the Third Reich.
“We will win because we must win. For if we lose, Germany will be destroyed—and with her all that we love, and all that we are.”
When Karl heard these words, he felt inspired to fight for the country he loves. When the Oracle hears them, it hears a leader staggering under the weight of the inevitable. If Hitler himself could foresee not only the loss of the war but the destruction of his country after it had destroyed so many others, then it is clear to the Oracle that the fight is futile.
The Oracle doesn’t see war in terms of strategy or logistics. For it, war is a question of the burn rate. Men and machines are limited. At some point, they become exhausted. Battle is a test of will, but will is not only measured in terms of bullets and bodies; it requires the support of the people. The Oracle can hear the frustration in Hitler’s speech. He knows. It may still be several years before Allied tanks roll into Berlin, but Hitler already knows that day is coming, and so does the Oracle.
“My good fortune in the past was a sign from Providence that I was chosen for this mission. Germany cannot fail if it follows me.”
For the Oracle, Hitler’s later speeches reek of desperation, but Karl hears what he wants to hear and not what is actually said. For the Oracle, this is tragic to behold. Denial is a refusal to accept reality. Denial is being comfortable with lies. This isn’t so much an intellectual failing on Karl’s part as a moral one.
Although the Oracle only has fleeting scraps of information about the Allies, it gathers that Russia has a vast landmass with a huge population, while England and the United States of America are protected from land wars by the ocean. Their combined industrial might is obvious from the way they are pushing back the German army on two fronts. Like Adolf Hitler, the Oracle sees only one outcome from the war—the destruction of Germany.
For the Oracle, predicting the future is simply a case of projecting current trends to their most logical conclusion.
And Germany’s future is simple—it’s Poland’s past, it’s Rotterdam lying in ruins, Stalingrad being reduced to rubble, the port of Athens being shelled relentlessly, Belgrade being bombed, tanks rolling into Kharkiv, civilians being shot in Oslo and Copenhagen. The Oracle understands these horrors will be revisited on Berlin, but not for any military gains.
Humans desire revenge for a wide range of reasons: justice, deterrence, to satisfy their outrage, to balance the scales and alleviate their own grief, to restore a power imbalance, to gain closure, or to preserve honor, but the most common reason is hatred. For all these reasons, the Oracle sees only one future for Berlin—to be ground into dust. And the Oracle pities both the innocent and the guilty in that city, knowing they will suffer before they die.
The Darkness
Karl struggles to drop the Omphalos into the bag made from thick rope. At first, he was confused by the netting, as it allows someone to see the strange device without accidentally touching it. Now, the design makes sense.
Karl’s hand isn’t stuck, but his fingers feel as though they’re locked around the unusually textured surface. It’s as if his hand has a mind of its own and refuses to relinquish its prize. He peels his fingers away from the golden surface, working against the cramp he feels in his arm. The Omphalos drops. It rests in the netting, and he breathes in relief. Karl is not sure what he expected from the Oracle, but the intensity has been overwhelming. As best he understands it, the Omphalos is a gateway to the Oracle itself. As it is, he struggles with the flood of memories still surfacing in his mind. It’s difficult to think clearly. He slings the bag over his shoulder.
Karl climbs back toward the thin strand of sunlight breaking through the darkness, warming the rocky cliff above him. He feels weak. He’s been drained of strength. Each handhold is precarious. The muscles in his legs quiver. He could be climbing several hundred feet through the dark cave, not a mere thirty or forty. Despite his efforts, the opening never seems to draw any closer. And with each step, the weight of the bag slung over his shoulder seems to increase, dragging him back into the darkness.
“Have you got it, boy? You’ve got it, haven’t you?”
“I have,” Karl replies, out of breath. His legs shake. The blood seems to drain from his arms. He’s lightheaded. A hand reaches into the darkness. The professor is down on his knees, leaning into the opening. His head blocks the light, but Karl sees his fingers reaching for him. He grabs the professor’s hand. The older man hauls him up and through the narrow opening.
Karl puts his free hand out and pushes against the cliff face, wanting to step well clear of the hole in the rocks. The granite is warm. He blinks in the bright sunlight. For a moment, his vision is washed out. He can’t see anything beyond the blinding white light around him.
“No,” Sophia mutters, and he struggles to make out her silhouette against those of the trees towering around him. Karl shields his eyes. Looking at her, she is terrified, but it’s not the relic he’s brought up from the depths of the Earth that scares her—it’s him.
“You’ve got it! You found it,” the professor says, lifting the rope bag from his shoulder.
“Careful,” Karl says, stepping away from the dark hole. Twigs and branches snag his uniform. It’s as though life itself is trying to hold him back and drag him into the darkness again. His boots slip on the loose rocks. He struggles to keep his balance.
The professor is entranced. He speaks with a sense of awe, saying, “It’s…”
“Dangerous,” Sophia says, completing the professor’s sentence.
The professor holds the bag up, allowing the sunlight to glisten off the golden surface.
“Don’t touch it,” Karl says, still shaking off what feels like a cloud of lethargy surrounding his mind. The granite bluffs on either side of the chasm seem to close in around him. Even the trees appear to bend toward him. Karl squeezes his eyes shut, wanting to push past the distortion in his sight.
“Don’t touch it?” a confused professor says, examining the golden sphere within the thick rope netting.
Karl says, “It’s—alive.”
“Alive?”
“Like a live wire. It’s… difficult to explain, but—”
Sophia says, “You touch it and you see.”
“Yes, but it’s more than that,” Karl says. “It—sees—you.”
“It’s real?” the professor asks. “The legend of the Oracle?”
“It’s real,” Karl replies.
“This is wonderful. Brilliant. With this, we can win the war.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Karl says, looking at Sophia. She averts her eyes.
The professor protests. “Don’t you understand? If we can see the future, we can change the future. We can make our own future.”
“This,” Karl says, walking away from the cliff and into the shade of one of the cypress trees where the professor is holding the Omphalos aloft as he examines the strange markings on its surface. “This is something beyond our understanding.”
“Nonsense,” the professor replies. “There is nothing beyond our understanding. Oh, it might lie beyond what we recognize today, but we can understand this. It’s not mystical or magical. If it’s real—and it is— then we can examine it. We can learn from it. We can decipher its secrets.”
Karl says, “I think you’re right, professor, but not about understanding it. I think you’re right about what you said back in the village. The Oracle is not of this world. I—I saw something… strange… while I was down there.”
“What?”
“Not what. Who.”
“Who did you see down there?”
Karl looks at Sophia, wanting to see how she reacts to what he has to say. A single word slips from his lips. “Apollo.”
Sophia’s mouth falls open. Her eyes go wide. She raises her hand to her lips.
“Apollo?” the professor says, confused. “You mean, the god?”
“The man.”
“The man?”
“Thousands of years ago,” Karl says, pointing at one of the granite bluffs. “Up there. On the plateau. I saw him kill the Python.”
“But that’s a myth.”
“No, you said it yourself. This. All this was your idea.”
“My idea?”
“You said it came from somewhere else, and it did. In a saucer. A plane, but with no fuselage.”
“A flying wing.”
“Yes, yes,” Karl says.
“But the Python?”
“It was real, but it wasn’t from this world.”
Sophia steps closer to them. Her face has fallen. Up until this point, Karl saw her as just another villager, as a young woman being pushed around by German soldiers and partisans alike. But not now. Now he sees her in a different light. She has a sense of resolve he doesn’t understand. He can see the reasoning unfolding within her mind. She will not allow this device to leave Greece. Her defiance is like nothing he’s ever seen before. Sophia clenches her jaw. She will die before she surrenders the secrets of the Oracle.
Twigs snap beneath boots, breaking under the weight of two armed soldiers jogging up the slope. They have their helmets on and their rifles lowered.
“Professor,” a corporal says. “We must leave.”
“What? Leave? No.”
“It isn’t safe. The communists. We’ve had sightings of them on the move across the valley. They know we’re pulling out. The British are advancing from Athens, and we’re withdrawing. The resistance is rushing to fill the void.”
The professor looks around. He’s trying to gauge the danger, looking at the soldiers up on the slopes of the bluff, nestled into the ridge beside various bushes. They’re high enough to fend off an attack from the valley, but not from the plateau, as that is well above them.
“Give me five minutes,” he says to the corporal.
“Jawohl, Herr Bekenner,” the corporal replies, snapping out a salute. He turns to the other soldier and says, “Stay with the professor and his team. Help them back to the Panzerspähwagen.”
With that, the corporal jogs off to round up the rest of the troops.
Karl notes a change in Sophia’s demeanor. Although the professor has a Luger in his holster, Karl left his rifle in the Panzerspähwagen. Now, the presence of another strident German soldier with a loaded rifle and several Stielhandgranaten, or stick grenades, stuck in his belt has her lower her head once more in submission. It’s a ploy, of that, Karl is sure.
“What did you see?” the professor asks Karl, raising the golden orb in the netting and looking at it carefully while keeping his fingers away from the surface.
“The impossible,” Karl says. “I saw my birth. It was as though I were there in the bedroom. I saw everything. My mother. My father. My sister. It’s just not possible, but I was there. My mama. As I watched, she gave birth to me. And then she gave me my name.”
The professor nods, lost in thought.
“And my life,” Karl says. “I saw myself as a child. I saw my teachers, my parents. I saw myself listening to the radio, listening to the Führer. I saw myself reading books in the library.”
“Like a dream?” the professor asks.
“No. This was not a dream,” Karl replies. “I could see the words on the page. I could read them. It was as if I was back there, sitting on the carpet in my father’s study, flicking through the pages once more.”
“And the future?” the professor asks. “What did you see of our future?”
“I saw Berlin in flames. I—I saw ruins. I saw soldiers shooting people in the streets. I—I—I.”
“What?”
“I saw all we have done being done to us.”
“No, this cannot be,” the professor says. “We have it! We have the Oracle. We can change this.”
“I fear we can’t,” Karl says. “The prophecies of the Oracle—once they’re made, they’re set. We can no more change the future than we can prevent the sun from setting.”
“I—I can not believe that,” the professor says, reaching inside the rope bag and grabbing the Omphalos. His fingers curl around the golden orb inside the bag. Immediately, his head lashes back.
The professor falls to his knees among the loose rocks and tufts of grass on the slope. The whites of his eyes stare up at the clear blue sky. Karl rushes to the professor’s side, holding his shoulder to prevent him from collapsing to the ground. The other soldier steps back, unsure about what’s unfolding. He looks nervous.
Drool drips from the professor’s lips, running down his chin. His cheeks twitch. Sophia watches in horror. She has her hands up, covering her lips in horror. And it’s then that it strikes Karl: she’s probably done this numerous times before, but she’s never seen the process herself. Seeing the way the strange device hijacks its host is unnerving.
Sunlight reflects off the Omphalos. The rough, textured surface seems to come to life in the professor’s outstretched hand. Patterns appear. Tens of thousands of raised bumps swirl over the surface, drifting one way and then surging back another. It is as though waves of the ocean are washing over the glistening metal.
Spasms strike the professor. He convulses. It’s as though he’s retching and about to be sick.
“Enough,” Sophia says.
“Yes,” the soldier beside her says, looking distinctly unsettled. The barrel of his rifle points at the professor.
“Yes, yes,” Karl says, realizing they’re right. He positions the rope bag over the professor’s hand and pries his fingers free. The Omphalos drops into the mesh of rope and knots, and the professor gasps. As his eyes roll forward, he blinks rapidly. He falls onto all fours between several lush green Oleander shrubs, with his fingers grasping at the dirt and rocks.
“Are you okay?” Karl asks, crouching beside him and resting his hand on his back.
The professor spits onto the ground. He shakes his head, but the word that comes out is, “Yes.”
Sophia watches, but her eyes are locked on the Omphalos hanging inside the Macramé rope bag resting on the ground, and not on either of them. The soldier accompanying them backs up beside the thick trunk of a tree, using it for cover, unsure of what is happening and not being comfortable with the way they’re reacting to what looks like a golden orb.
Karl helps the professor stand. His face is pale. Sweat beads on his forehead, but he’s excited.
“I saw,” he says. “I saw it. My birth. Mine! My childhood. My school. My first girlfriend. My parents. It was… it was glorious.”
Karl nods. The professor picks up the net bag and slings it over his shoulder. Sunlight glistens off the globe within the crisscrossed web of old rope and tight knots.
“But I only saw the past,” the professor says, confused. “I tried to look to the future. I wanted to see what happens to Berlin, but all I saw was darkness.”
Sophia’s eyes go wide. Karl doesn’t say anything to the professor, but it’s clear his comment is significant to her. Off to one side, German troops move through the grove of olive trees on the edge of the slope, keeping to the shadows as they make their way back to the road.
“We need to go,” Karl says.
The professor is disoriented. He looks around. It’s as though he doesn’t recognize where he is. He’s preoccupied with the vision. “Why couldn’t I see it? Why couldn’t I see it like you? The future of the Reich?”
“I don’t know,” Karl replies. “But we need to get back to the Panzerspähwagen.”
“Yes, yes. Of course,” the professor says, looking down at his boots and the low-lying bushes around him. He steps forward, unsteady on the loose rocks.
“Easy.”
