The oracle, p.25
The Oracle, page 25
The Omphalos rolls across the deck, sliding away from his feet over toward the gunwale as the boat pitches. Karl can’t let go of the rudder. He needs to keep the fishing boat steering into the storm, or it’s in danger of capsizing. The swell recedes as a mountain of water rises before him, and he grabs at the handle of the bag. His fingers clutch at the air, falling just short as another wave crashes into the wooden side of the vessel. The Omphalos rolls back just far enough for him to reach the rope bag. He hauls it back to him and turns his attention to the storm.
As he rides over the swell, the hull of the fishing boat comes crashing down on the water, sending out a wall of spray.
“Is this what you want?” Karl calls out over the noise of the storm, holding the rope bag aloft in one hand. “Is this what you’re after?”
As if in response, lightning breaks overhead, crackling through the clouds. Thunder shakes his bones.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Karl yells. “You’ve seen me. You’ve seen my life, but you forget. I’ve seen you. I know what you are!”
A wave slams into the side of the boat and washes over the deck. The flood of water sweeps him off his feet, pushing him aside. Karl is slammed into the gunwale. The rush of the wave sweeps his legs up and over the side of the boat. Water splashes over his face. With one hand, he’s holding the Omphalos, with the other, he’s holding onto the rough wooden handrail running around the boat. He can’t hold on. Not with one hand. He has to let go of something. He needs both hands.
Without the rudder steering the boat, it turns and tilts, being pushed by the waves. A loose rope lashes the side of his face, stinging his cheek, but it offers him hope. He lets go of the gunwale and grabs the rope as it flicks past.
Immediately, Karl is washed out into the open sea, but he’s able to grab the rope with both hands. He slips the bag over his hand, and it is washed along his arm, back to his shoulder.
The fishing boat pitches and turns. Its wooden hull is lifted by the next wave. Gravity slams it back into the sea, but the rope is secure. Karl is pulled along behind the stricken vessel.
Spluttering and fighting to breathe, Karl pulls himself up the rope, working hand over hand until he can grab the wooden stern and haul himself back on deck. He reaches for the rudder, wanting to turn the fishing boat back into the swell when the deck shifts beneath him, sliding sideways in the sea. Before Karl can bring the boat to bear, a massive wave strikes from the starboard side, lifting the boat and turning it.
The fishing boat rolls. Before Karl can react, the deck goes from under his feet to being raised on its side. And, suddenly, the wooden planks of the deck are towering over his head.
The boat capsizes. Spray rushes out over the sea. Water swirls over Karl. The sea engulfs him. Darkness surrounds him. Waves crash above him. He kicks with his legs, wanting to reach the surface. Bubbles provide him with a sense of direction. His life jacket draws him up, but his legs are tangled in the loose fishing nets. Karl struggles, kicking with his boots, fighting to reach the surface.
The weight of the Omphalos drags him down. The strange alien orb glows within the dark depths of the sea. Karl’s lungs feel as though they’re going to burst. He has to break the surface. He has to breathe. He has to, but he can’t.
Darkness closes over him.
The British
With the sun beating down on him, Karl wakes to find himself drifting on the sea with his head and neck supported by his life jacket. His right foot is still tangled in one of the fishing nets. Ropes float on the glassy surface of the Mediterranean.
Karl pulls himself along the frayed rope, kicking to free himself from the net. The upturned hull of his fishing boat bobs in the water not more than twenty feet away. The sea is calm. Karl’s not sure when the storm passed, but it was before dawn. His lifejacket kept him buoyant. Now, with the day having risen, he musters his strength and climbs onto the wooden hull. Barnacles and algae cling to the underside of the boat. Kicking with his boots, he pushes himself up to the wooden keel running down the center of the fishing boat. Along with the rudder, a brass propeller sits exposed to the sun. Karl loops the rope bag containing the Omphalos over the rudder to keep it from rolling into the sea. The golden orb dangles in the water.
To his surprise, the upside-down fishing boat is stable. He stands and looks around, hoping to see land. Nothing. He could be anywhere in the Mediterranean. Karl has no idea how the currents or tides affect his position. With no shade and no fresh water, he figures he’ll last for a day or two at most.
Although he has no doubt it looks silly, he takes his lifejacket off and uses it to protect his forehead and shoulders from the sun, holding it loosely in place as he sits on the hull, watching as water laps at the edge of his boat.
With no clouds in the sky and no land in sight, Karl feels as though he’s on another planet. The open sea is unlike anything he’s ever seen, even when sailing around Greece. It’s entirely featureless, which is disconcerting. Regardless of where he looks, the view is the same, just a vast, open, empty expanse stretching to the horizon, echoing the sky. The dark blue of the sea reaches out seemingly forever, only to end abruptly in a dead-straight line as it gives way to the radiant blue dome stretching overhead. Greece is but a dream. Germany seems as though it is light-years away. Apparently, the world is at war, but someone forgot to tell Poseidon.
Karl wonders about the Oracle. He wonders if it sees Earth in the same abstract manner as he surveys the distant horizon. Rather than being bogged down with the trifling, all-consuming affairs of humanity, it must see a world consumed by oceans. It must see life unfolding with far more variety than any human scientist could ever imagine. And what about other worlds? How does Earth compare? And what about the Oracle’s homeworld? What correlations are there? What’s similar? What’s different?
Karl wonders if there are oceans elsewhere in the universe. He figures there must be. Perhaps some of them are encased in ice. Karl remembers visiting his cousins on the isle of Rügen, a mile off the coast of northern Germany, before the war. It was a bitter winter, and the sea froze. His cousins took him skating on the ice. For him, it was difficult to believe this was the same place he’d been in summer.
Off to one side, there’s smoke on the horizon. It’s subtle, being faint at first, and Karl wonders if he’s imagining it, but slowly a ship comes over the horizon. First, he sees its mast, then its bridge, its V-shaped hull and finally the naval gun mounted on its deck. Black fumes chug from its chimney.
“Hey. Over here,” Karl yells in German, waving his arms and jumping up and down on the hull of his overturned fishing boat. Ripples race away from the hull.
The warship is crossing easily a mile away from him. They probably can’t see him. Regardless, Karl continues waving his arms, trying to attract their attention.
To his delight, a deep, resonant horn sounds. They’ve seen him. The warship turns. The massive twin guns mounted on the high bow of the ship remain pointing straight ahead, but Karl can see sailors on deck. Someone’s spotted him, probably while on watch for German submarines with a pair of binoculars. Well, they spotted a German, he thinks, resigning himself to spending the rest of the war in an Allied prisoner of war camp.
The rear deck of the destroyer is far lower than the bow and seems to trail behind the bridge. The designation R56 is boldly displayed in large white letters painted on the side of the hull beneath the smokestack, in roughly the middle of the elongated warship. A British flag flutters in the breeze. It’s the naval ensign, being a white flag with a red cross running through it and the Union Jack in the top left corner. Karl’s not sure he’s ever seen a sight as beautiful as a big old ugly warship bristling with guns and spewing black smoke across the open sea.
As the warship comes alongside, it slows to a halt, sitting roughly a hundred yards away from him.
Someone yells, “Ahoy,” over a loudspeaker, and Karl recognizes the accent from the football radio broadcasts his father so dearly loved.
In English, he yells back at the top of his lungs, “Hull-oooho, Manchester!”
There’s laughter from the sailors on deck. Karl wasn’t really thinking too deeply about his response. If anything, he was having a lark, just a bit of fun after all the stress of the past few days, but they think he’s English. They think they’re rescuing one of their own.
From near the stern, a rowboat is lowered from a pair of cranes. Six oars point into the air as the boat rests on the glassy surface of the Mediterranean. Sailors climb down a rope net lowered over the side of the warship and into the rowboat.
Instinctively, Karl reaches for his Erkennungsmarke, the metal tag hanging around his neck that identifies him as a German soldier, wanting to toss it into the water, but it’s gone. Niko had him throw it into the bushes last night. As far as the sailors rowing toward him know, he’s British.
“Where are you from?” an officer calls out from the rowboat as it approaches.
“North London,” Karl replies, lying. “Near Wembley.”
No sooner have those words left his lips than he feels a tinge of regret. He should have named some other suburb. Naming the location of a famous football stadium screams dumb. He should have picked an obscure suburb rather than a common one.
“What is an Englishman doing out here in the middle of the Mediterranean?” the officer asks as the bow of the rowboat comes to rest on the upturned hull of Karl’s fishing boat. The officer is suspicious, which is understandable, but he can’t possibly think Karl poses a threat.
Karl decides to be honest—within limits. He points in a random direction, not really knowing where he’s pointing. He could be pointing at Egypt for all he knows, but he has to point somewhere.
“I’ve come from Greece, from a small fishing village on the Gulf of Corinth.”
“You’re a long way from the mainland.”
“I was heading to Crete when I got caught in a storm.”
Although there are six sailors working the oars, there are nine sailors in the long rowboat. The officer is at the bow, while two soldiers with rifles sit at the stern. They’re discrete, with their rifles resting against the sidewalls of the rowboat, but Karl has no doubt those rifles are loaded. One of them has a radio and is relaying the conversation back to the ship. As for the officer, he has a pistol in a side holster. He rests his hand on the butt of the gun. As Karl is wearing torn trousers with a bloodied bandage wrapped around his chest, they can see he’s unarmed.
“What were you doing in Greece?”
“I lived there,” Karl says, really not knowing how else to respond to a question for which he has no good answer. He hopes something simple and concise will suffice.
“And you’ve been injured?” the officer says, as one of the sailors clambers out onto Karl’s capsized fishing boat. The sailor holds a rope taut, keeping the rowboat in place.
“I was grazed,” Karl says.
“Who shot you? And why?”
“The communists,” Karl replies, continuing to tell an abridged version of the truth. “That’s why I’m out here. It’s a mess back there. With the Germans leaving, the communists are on a rampage. Killing anyone different.”
The officer nods slightly at that point, accepting it. Perhaps he realizes the Nazis aren’t the only enemy in this war.
“Well, we’re heading to Crete. Jump on board.”
Karl hesitates. The Omphalos is still hanging from the rudder.
“Is everything okay?” the officer asks.
Karl bluffs. He holds his hands out wide. “This is it. This is everything I own. I—I…”
“Meyers, can we raise his boat?”
“Aye, slowly, sir,” one of the men at the back of the rowboat says. “We can hoist it using the crane, but we need to go slow and let the water drain as we go.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
The officer holds out his hand, gesturing for Karl to approach.
Karl steps down near the waterline.
“Easy, sir,” the sailor on the upturned hull beside him says. Being called sir by the enemy of Germany is jarring at first, but it exposes the fallacy of Germany’s war. The British are decent.
“Thank you,” Karl says, reaching out to the officer in the boat. To his surprise, the officer leans forward and grips Karl’s forehand. Karl thought they were going to shake hands, but the officer grabs his arm with strength, taking some of his weight and helping him step into the rowboat. The other sailor joins them and, once they’re seated, they row back to the warship drifting nearby.
As Karl sits on the wooden bench seat, the officer grills him, “So, if you’re from North London, who do you follow in the league?”
“Tottenham,” Karl replies with a hint of nostalgia in his voice, but not because Tottenham Hotspurs are a north London team—which he knows they are—but rather because it’s the team Niko liked.
“The spurs, huh?” the officer says as six oars dip in and out of the water with a sense of military precision.
“Yeah.”
The officer says, “Being from Wembley, I thought you’d be an Arsenal fan. They’re north London, right? A bit closer than Tottenham.”
“Yeah, they are,” Karl replies somewhat sheepishly. He’s distracted. He’s worried about the Omphalos. He’s wondering what will happen if it falls into the hands of the British.
“Have you been there?”
“Where?”
“Arsenal.”
Karl shakes his head. The officer is testing him, but he doesn’t realize he’s talking to someone with a mind like an encyclopedia. For Karl, trivia is like candy.
“Arsenal’s not a suburb,” Karl replies. “Wasn’t it originally an ammo factory on the south side? Ah, I think they’ve been in Highbury for a while now, haven’t they? Since before I was born.”
At a guess, the officer is in his early forties. He rests his hand on Karl’s shoulder.
“I had to be sure, mate.”
“No problem.”
The sailors are well-versed in approaching the warship. Those close to the hull raise their oars, placing them in holders that keep them vertical as the rowboat naturally drifts in alongside the steel hull. One of the sailors reaches out and takes hold of the rope netting, which acts as a broad ladder, allowing several sailors to climb at a time. Others grab wires from the overhead cranes and clip them onto both the bow and the stern of the rowboat, allowing it to be hoisted back on board once they’ve climbed up.
Karl grabs the thick rope and begins climbing, stepping into the rope rungs as he works his way higher on the hull. Sailors reach out from above. Once he’s at shoulder height, they grab him under his armpits and haul him aboard. They’re strong but gentle and help him stand aright. It feels good to have the deck of a warship beneath his boots.
“And you are?” another officer on deck asks him. Given the officer’s formal dress, naval hat and golden shoulder boards, Karl figures this is the captain.
“Ah, I’m Karl,” he says, offering a handshake as a deliberate strategy to draw attention away from the possibility of being a soldier. “Karl May.”
“Captain McCallister,” the officer replies, accepting and shaking Karl’s hand. “Welcome aboard the HMS Tuscan. And you’ve met Lieutenant Davis.”
“Yes,” Karl says, seeing the lieutenant standing beside him, after climbing up from the rowboat.
“And, from what I heard on the radio, you’ve been in Greece? Recently?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
Karl swallows the lump in his throat and falls in behind the captain and lieutenant. Two armed guards follow behind him, escorting them.
As they walk, the captain says, “We’ll retrieve your boat, and provide you with food, water and clothing.”
“Thank you,” Karl says, being careful with his pronunciation while trying to sound natural and relaxed. He chose Wembley as his place of origin within England because that’s where the sports broadcasts originate from, although he has no idea if the accent he spent so many Saturdays listening to was actually from Wembley or somewhere else. He’s also aware that his vocabulary is limited. If they push him hard, he’s going to struggle to understand them and won’t be able to articulate concepts that should come naturally to someone born in England.
The captain ducks slightly as he steps over the metal rim of a hatchway leading inside the warship. The corridor is narrow. Pipes and cables run along the ceiling. Sailors push past, going in the other direction. Steep, narrow stairs are set on various sides of the walkway. They climb a set of stairs and turn into a room with a large metal table set in the middle. Dozens of maps lie unfolded on top of each other. The sailors stand to attention as the captain and lieutenant lead Karl over to the broad table. A map of Greece lies on top.
“Where are we?” Karl asks, looking at the Mediterranean Sea on the map.
The captain points at a spot to the west of Crete, saying, “Around here. Above the Hellenic Trench, which drops to a depth of around 15,000 feet.”
“Wow.”
“Can you show us where you’re from?” the captain asks, and for the first time, Karl relaxes. They believe him. They’re looking to learn what they can from him.
“Ah, sure,” Karl says, walking around the table and orienting himself. Without his glasses, he needs to squint to make out details. To his surprise, Delphi isn’t even marked on the map, but he spots Itea on the coast. He might not be able to resolve the individual letters, but he can see the upright ‘I’ followed by a crumple of three other letters. Based on that, he points at the map. “Up here. In the mountains. There’s a small village called Delphi. After the Germans left, the communists came in along this valley, coming from the plains in the east.”
“And the Germans?” the captain asks. “How many of them were there in the mountains? When did they leave?”
“Ah, there were maybe forty of them.”
“And their armament?”
Karl is careful to avoid any phrases that might reveal he’s a soldier, let alone a German soldier. He resists the temptation to use descriptive terms like leichter Panzerspähwagen.
