Angelo peered into the dingy interior of the hut to no
avail. He could see nothing. He might as well have been blind. He took a few
very careful, tentative steps into the room, expecting to come into contact
with something horrendous at any moment. He did encourage himself though by the
fact that the last man had left alive.
“That’s better,” said the Prophet, quite startling him out
of his wits, and then fell as silent as the grave.
Officer Angelo waited, trying to get his breathing under
control and his knees to stop shaking, not quite sure what would happen next;
whether he should speak or just wait. He was inclined to wait, for he had no
real question to ask, and he didn’t really want to approach the subject of
putting the Prophet under arrest just yet. He wished he could see him though,
and then he’d be better able to judge what to do: whether to begin begging for
his life, make up a bogus question, or just plain make a run for it while his
skin was still intact.
The Prophet was in no hurry. He sensed Officer Angelo’s
agitation; saw all his thoughts and deceptions as clear as if he was a child
with ice-cream on his face, denying that he had eaten one. Like the other
Getham, the Prophet was also blind, and therefore wasn’t tempted to leave his
body for the world of lies and illusion where everyone else lived. Inside, the
truth was always plain to see.
And inside his head, although it was neither dark nor
light, his world was vivid around him, made so by the voices that spoke to him.
They painted a picture more complete than mere mortal eyes could see. The
voices had been there ever since he could remember, telling him things,
describing things, providing him with a running commentary on everything that
was happening in the solar system. If someone said something, the voice would
tell him what they really meant, even if they didn’t know it themselves. If
someone asked a question the voice would tell him what to answer.
And the source of all this wisdom was the wormhole. The
sub-spectral energy of the wormhole extended far into the solar system and,
although only a select few could see it, surrounded everyone like a whirling
wall of living information.
Everything was written on that wall and the Prophet could
read it like a book. This is where the voices emanated from. These were the
voices he heard, telling him of things past, things now, and things to come. He
studied the wall in his every waking and sleeping moment and read there the
story of the world as it was, as it is, and as it will be.
That was until a year ago. Then something started to
change, and his vision began, little by little, to darken. At first he thought
he was going blind, figuratively speaking, that he was losing his gift of
foresight. But he could still see
things, in the past….and in the now. The voices still spoke to him as loudly as
ever. It was just the future that was being covered by a thin black veil
through which it got more and more difficult to peer. Many other seers and
readers had noticed this disturbing trend too, and as the veil crept closer to
the present time they got the distinct impression that the future was being
erased, and that the end of all time was near. No-one knew how or why, or what
it was. They just knew it was coming. They also knew it was coming out of the
wormhole……..and they called it - The Doom.
“Your eyes are a curse,” came the deep voice out of the
darkness again, startling Officer Angelo, who had drifted off into a daydream
of thoughts. “You see evil everywhere…more than most people, because you are a
policeman. My blindness is a blessing. I see only myself, therefore I think
twice before judging.”
As Officer Angelo’s maligned eyes slowly accustomed
themselves to the gloom, he could vaguely begin to discern a giant black man
squatting on a wooden tripod in the centre of the room. He had large milky
white staring eyes almost popping out of his face, and long Rasta locks of hair
twirling like snakes down and around his gleaming naked body. Sulphurous fumes
from the pit rose up through the cracks in the floorboards and writhed around
the two of them.
“You come to take me on a journey,” he said, and the hut
reverberated as he spoke.
“Something like that,” said Officer Angelo with absolutely
no conviction in his voice. All he could think was that he was going to die.
“We’re all going to die,” said the Oracle. “Sooner or
later.”
N
Gertie was getting the urge. It was only at certain times
during the month that she got the urge, and when she did, she found Masino very
attractive. Normally she couldn’t stand him because he was a big mouth braggart
with a permanent pus-filled pimple under his nose that consumed all of ones
attention during a conversation, but at the moment none of that mattered to
her…when she got the urge, anyone would do. This was all very confusing to
Masino. Kind of like the lottery. He never knew when his number was going to
come up, and she could be really cruel if he got it wrong. At the moment they
were humping it up in the miscellaneous equipment locker with all the
concomitant bangs and rattles one would expect from abusing cheap metal
furniture. They never heard the customs hall door open and close. If they’d
have looked at the flickering security monitor they’d have seen two men, one
short and clothed – the other huge and naked - walking briskly past their
unmanned customs-desk and key open the airlock that led to the docking bays.
They didn’t, and everybody got off satisfactorily.
