Oracle
Authors: Mike Resnick
Fictionwise, Inc.
www.fictionwise.com
Copyright ©1992 Mike Resnick
ORACLE
by Mike Resnick
Volume 2 of the Oracle Trilogy
To Carol, as always,
And to Mark and Lynne Aronson,
close friends for half a lifetime
It was a time of giants.
There was no room for them to breathe and flex their muscles in mankind's sprawling Democracy, so they gravitated to the distant, barren worlds of the Inner Frontier, drawn ever closer to the bright galactic Core like moths to a flame.
Oh, they fit into human frames, most of them, but they were giants nonetheless. No one knew what had brought them forth in such quantity at this particular moment in human history. Perhaps there was a need for them in a galaxy filled to overflowing with little people possessed of even smaller dreams. Possibly it was the savage splendor of Inner Frontier itself, for it was certainly not a place for ordinary men and women. Or maybe it was simply time for a race that had been notably short of giants in recent eons to begin producing them once again.
But whatever the reason, they swarmed out beyond the furthest reaches of the explored galaxy, spreading the seed of Man to hundreds of new worlds, and in the process creating a cycle of legends that would never die as long as men could tell tales of heroic deeds.
There was Faraway Jones, who set foot on more than 500 new worlds, never quite certain what he was looking for, always sure that he hadn't yet found it.
There was a shadowy figure known only as the Whistler, who had killed more than one hundred men and aliens.
There was Friday Nellie, who turned her whorehouse into a hospital during the war against the Setts, and finally saw it declared a shrine by the very men who once tried to close it down.
There was Jamal, who left no fingerprints or footprints, but had plundered palaces that to this day do not know they were plundered.
There was Bet-a-World Murphy, who at various times owned nine different gold-mining worlds, and lost every one of them at the gaming tables.
There was Backbreaker Ben Ami, who wrestled aliens for money and killed men for pleasure. There was the Marquis of Queensbury, who fought by no rules at all, and the White Knight, albino killer of fifty men, and Sally the Blade, and the Forever Kid, who reached the age of nineteen and just stopped growing for the next two centuries, and Catastrophe Baker, who made whole planets shake beneath his feet, and the exotic Pearl of Maracaibo, and the Jade Queen, whose sins were condemned by every race in the galaxy, and Father Christmas, and the One-Armed Bandit with his deadly prosthetic arm, and the Earth Mother, and Lizard Malloy, and the deceptively mild-mannered Cemetery Smith.
Giants all.
Yet there was one giant who was destined to tower over all of the others, to juggle the lives of men and worlds as if they were so many toys, to rewrite the history of the Inner Frontier, and the Outer Frontier, and the Spiral Arm, and even the all-powerful Democracy itself. At various times in her short, turbulent life she was known as the Soothsayer, and the Oracle, and the Prophet. By the time she had passed from the galactic scene, only a handful of survivors knew her true name, or her planet of origin, or even her early history, for such is the way with giants and legends.
But she had an origin, and a history, and a name.
This is her story.
His real name was Carlos Mendoza, but it had been so many years since he used it that it seemed almost alien to him.
Here on the Inner Frontier, among the sparsely-populated worlds that lay between Man's sprawling Democracy and the galactic core, men changed names with the ease, and occasionally the frequency, that their brothers in the Democracy changed clothes. Mendoza had had many occupations in his 61 years, some of which he wished to forget and some that he wished his enemies would forget, and he had had almost as many names, but the one that had stuck was the Iceman.
There were people who said he was the Iceman because he had once been the ruler of a planet totally covered by a mile-thick glacier. Others said no, that he got the name because he was a cold-blooded killer. A few suggested that he possessed a rare disease that threatened to kill him by lowering his body temperature, and that's why he had finally settled on the hot, desert world of Last Chance.
The Iceman didn't care what people thought about the genesis of his name. In fact, there wasn't much that he did care about. Money, of course; and the power he exercised as the owner of the End of the Line, the only tavern on Last Chance—but over the years he had lost interest in most other things.
Except gossip.
Miners, traders, explorers, adventurers, and bounty hunters would stop on Last Chance to refuel their ships, or lay in their supplies, or register their claims, or occasionally to wait for their mail or their rewards to catch up with them, and they would come to the End of the Line, and they would talk. The Iceman never asked any questions, never volunteered any information, but he listened intently, and once in a long while he would hear some tidbit that momentarily brought a touch of animation to his impassive face. When that happened he would disappear for a week or a month, after which he would return to Last Chance as suddenly as he had left. Then he would sit in the bar and listen to more gossip, more tales of adventure and derring-do, of fortunes made and fortunes lost, of battles won and empires fallen, his face expressionless.
Those who cared about him—and they were few and far between—occasionally asked him precisely what he was hoping to hear, what it was that he went off to find on his rare excursions. He would politely sidestep their questions, for despite his reputation he was a courteous man, and shortly thereafter they would see him sitting at another table, listening to another traveler's tale.
He was not a physically impressive man. He was an inch or two below normal height, and he carried about 30 pounds of excess weight, and his hair was thinning on the top and white on the sides. He walked with a decided limp; most people assumed that he had a prosthetic leg, but no one ever asked him and he never volunteered any information about it. His voice was neither deep nor rich, though when he spoke on Last Chance it carried a ring of absolute authority that very few men challenged (and none ever challenged it twice.)
He was known throughout the Inner Frontier, but nobody knew quite what he had done to acquire his notoriety. He had killed some men, of course, but that was hardly sufficient to establish a reputation on the lawless frontier worlds. It was rumored that he had once worked for the Democracy in some covert capacity, but by its very nature nothing was known about his job. Once, fourteen years ago, he had disappeared from Last Chance for a number of months, and word had it that he had been responsible for the deaths of quite a few bounty hunters, but no one could verify it and the details were so vague that very few people put much credence in the story.
There was one woman who had heard the story and believed it, and after many false starts she finally tracked him down in his refuge on Last Chance, half a galaxy away from the affluent, populous worlds of the Democracy. She was middle-aged, with blue eyes and nondescript, sand-colored hair. Her nose had a small lump at the bridge, as if it had been broken many years ago, and her teeth were too white and too even to be her own.
The End of the Line was filled with the usual crowd of adventurers and misfits, humans and aliens, when she entered it. The aliens—seven Canphorites, a pair of Lodinites, two Domarians, and one each from a trio of races she had never seen before—were clustered together at a number of small tables. Most of them couldn't metabolize the bar's offerings, and were obviously waiting for the large casino, which consisted of some two dozen tables and an equal number of exotic games of chance, to open its doors. A small sign, written in various human and alien languages, announced that that happy moment would occur at sunset.
The heads of a quartet of alien carnivores, each snarling in mute defiance, were positioned above the long hardwood bar, and in a glass case just next to the changemaker was a tattered copy of a poem written by Black Orpheus, the Bard of the Inner Frontier, which he had created and autographed when he had stopped on Last Chance for an evening some two centuries ago.
Twenty humans, some dressed in colorful and expensive garments, others wearing the dull browns and grays of miners and prospectors, stood at the bar or sat at tables. None of them paid her any attention as she entered the tavern, looked around for a moment, and finally approached the bartender.
"I'm looking for a man known as the Iceman,” she said. “Is he here?"
The bartender nodded his head. “Right over there, sitting by the window."
"Will he speak to me?” she asked.
The bartender chuckled. “That depends on his mood. But he'll listen to you."
She thanked him and walked over to the Iceman's table, giving the aliens a wide berth as she did so.
"May I join you?” she asked.
"Pull up a chair, Mrs. Bailey,” he said.
She looked surprised. “You know who I am?"
"No,” he answered. “But I know your name."
"How?"
"You had to identify yourself when you requested landing coordinates,” said the Iceman. “Nobody lands on Last Chance without my approval."
"I see,” she said, sitting down. She stared across the table. “I can't believe that I've finally found you!"
"I wasn't lost, Mrs. Bailey,” he said expressionlessly.
"Perhaps not, but I've been looking for you for more than four years."
"And what's so important that you would spend four years of your life trying to find me?"
"My name is Bettina Bailey,” she began.
"I know."
"Does it mean anything to you?"
"Should it?"
"If the name Bailey doesn't, then I've wasted an enormous amount of time."
"I've never heard of anyone called Bettina Bailey,” he replied noncommittally.
"I've heard stories—rumors, really, to be honest—that you may have known my daughter."
"Go on,” said the Iceman.
"Her name is Penelope."
The Iceman pulled out a small cigar. “What did you hear?"
"I heard that you knew her.” Bettina Bailey paused, studying the Iceman's face. “I've even heard that she spent some time on Last Chance."
"That was fourteen years ago, Mrs. Bailey,” said the Iceman, lighting his cigar. “I haven't seen her since.” He shrugged. “For all I know, she's dead now."
Bettina Bailey stared unblinking at him. “If we're talking about the same girl, you know that's impossible."
The Iceman returned her stare for a long moment, as if considering his answer. Finally he took another puff of his cigar and nodded. “We're talking about the same girl."
"She would be 22 years old now."
"That would be about right,” agreed the Iceman.
Bettina Bailey paused again. “I've heard other rumors, too,” she said at last.
"Such as?"
"That she's living with aliens."
"An alien,” the Iceman corrected her.
"Then you know where she is?"
He shook his head. “No. I just know who she was with the last time I saw her."
"I've also heard that you've spent a lot of time looking for her,” continued Bettina Bailey.
He stared impassively at her and made no answer.
"And that you know more about her than any other man alive,” she continued.
"It's possible,” he agreed.
"It's more than possible. It's a fact."
"All right, it's a fact. Now what?"
"I want my daughter back."
"Pardon my pointing it out, Mrs. Bailey, but it took you long enough to come to that decision."