Helena. Danger. Ending.
I know, I thought, not wanting to disrupt my meditation with speech. Mr. Wallach is dead. Did you know it would happen?
Warning. The anchor vanishes. It happens. He is not. He chooses.
But we could have saved him. We could have made him listen.
HE CHOOSES.
The thought reverberated through me, wiping away all other thoughts and making me temporarily numb. I understand, I thought. I wish he’d chosen otherwise.
The oracle was silent, but the pressure of its awareness bore down on me like a heavy blanket. I embraced the feeling, letting it press me down into the imaginary foam further. After an endless moment, the oracle said, They fall. The guardians remain. Seal the cracks.
I don’t understand. I thought that was what Mr. Wallach had in mind, and that failed.
Many, few, one. Power strikes. I will end.
Impatience fractured my calm, and I concentrated on my breathing for a while, hoping I hadn’t lost my connection with the oracle. Do you mean you will end when only one is left? One of what?
The guardians fall. The guardians remain. I will end. Helena will end.
Do you mean death, or some other ending?
The oracle said nothing, but its attention increased. I had a feeling I’d confused it. Do you know death? What happened to Mr. Wallach?
I know ending. He ends. I end. Helena ends.
I drew in a sharp breath, and my connection to the oracle shattered. Breathing heavily, I lay on the couch with my eyes squeezed shut and wiped tears away before they could leak into my ears. That had been about as definitive as I could expect. The oracle had seen our death. Maybe it didn’t understand time, maybe it couldn’t tell me when it would happen, but I was convinced that waited in my near future.
I wiped away more tears and sat up. Crying wouldn’t solve anything. Since the oracle couldn’t tell me when it would happen, I could only keep on doing my job and hope that would help the Wardens find another solution to the invaders’ attacks. What I was not going to do was give up.
21
I’d never realized how much I depended on having two hands in my job. Some of the auguries were large and heavy, too big for me to easily lift one-handed. I ended up balancing those on my hip like an angular, motionless baby. I took the latest one to the counter and awkwardly heaved it up to lie flat on the countertop. “This one is $1700,” I said, flipping the cover open. “Did you have any more requests?”
“That’s the last,” Dave Henry said. He opened his familiar aluminum briefcase and extracted bundles of cash to hand to Judy. “Thanks. I hope we can get these interpreted before the next attack. It would be nice to go on the offensive for once.”
“Is that even possible?”
Dave shrugged. “Maybe. Lucia has some ideas, but I’m not allowed to discuss them. You know how she is.”
“I understand.”
Dave put the books away in the briefcase and nodded to me and Judy. “Be seeing you.”
I accepted the next person’s augury slip. The Nicollien woman was short and slim, built like Judy, but she had the hard look of a front line fighter, and I knew better than to make assumptions. Her question read Can I trust my new teammates? I wondered if by “new teammates” she meant Ambrosites, and was tempted to tell her she didn’t need an augury for that. Instead, I smiled and walked into the silence of the oracle.
It hadn’t paid attention to me all morning, but now I could feel its presence like someone hovering at my shoulder. “I don’t know whether to be heartened by this question, or annoyed,” I said as I paced the narrow aisles. “I mean, at least she’s asking, but on the other hand, she shouldn’t have to ask.” I pulled the augury off the shelf—a skinny little paperback, fortunately—and headed back for the store front.
The woman was the last of the Nicolliens that morning, and accepted the augury (Brian’s Hunt) with no change of expression. “Are you forming a new team?” I asked as Judy wrote up her receipt.
She nodded curtly. “I don’t like working with new people,” she said, “and Ambrosites…don’t worry, I won’t bad-mouth them, I’m just saying it takes some getting used to. On both sides.”
“I understand. Good luck.”
When she was gone, Judy said, “How many is that?”
“Fifteen people asked for auguries related to combining forces with Ambrosites. Most of them were positive ones, too. Not passive-aggressive or anything.”
“I’m glad. The invaders could attack again at any moment, and we need to be at our strongest.” Judy put the receipt book away. “I’ll fix lunch.”
I leaned against the counter and picked at the bandage on my hand, which still didn’t hurt, though my skin itched constantly. Whatever regenerating field the doctors had created, it didn’t feel like it was doing anything. It did make me wonder, though, if I would need rehabilitation to get my new tendons working properly. The thought didn’t disturb me the way it had a day ago. I’d stopped being freaked out on my own behalf and had moved on to mourning Wallach and being afraid for Viv.
Viv still hadn’t woken up. Rick Jeong had come in early this morning to remove what was left of the anchors and had told me there was no change in her condition. Whenever I had a free moment, like now, my thoughts went to her and to Jeremiah. There had to be something I could do—though even I knew that was a ridiculous thought. I hated being helpless.
I went back into the stacks and the oracle’s space. “Do you know what happened to Viv?” I asked.
The oracle’s attention was focused elsewhere. It gave me no answer. “Please,” I said. “You were here when it happened. You must know something.”
Still the oracle said nothing. I leaned against the nearest bookcase and breathed in air scented delicately with lilacs. It was so peaceful I wanted to cry at how little it reflected our world’s current situation. Any time now, I expected to hear of a new attack, or of some disaster arising from the fear generated by the attacks.
I walked through the stacks to the break room, which smelled deliciously of pungent dressing and parmesan cheese. Judy was already eating her chicken Caesar salad and only glanced at me when I sat down to mine. “You’re worrying again,” she said between bites. “You need to stop. It doesn’t do anyone any good.”
“I know.” I took a bite of salad. It tasted as good as it smelled, but I wasn’t very hungry. “I can’t stop trying to understand the oracle’s warnings. It’s still telling me we need to seal the cracks. When it bothers to speak to me.”
“Lucia will figure it out. Keep her informed about the oracle, and let her deal with it.”
I grimaced and laid my fork down. “The oracle is my responsibility. That feels like passing it off to someone else.”
“It’s more like using your resources. Lucia can do more with that information than we can.” Judy swigged some Diet Dr. Pepper and set the bottle down with great deliberation.
“I think—” I stopped speaking as the room swayed around me. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
Another wave of dizziness struck me. The guardians fall, the oracle said. Danger. He flees.