Leigh bent to retrieve the camera, snatching it up from the ground, and then a sound from behind them, like the roar of afire stoked with new fuel. They turned to look, and saw hundreds of red-faced, terrified people surging toward them out ofthe white gas clouds covering the south end of the park.
They ran.
The Oracle in the Desert
On the horizon, shapes appeared, round dark lumps shimmering in the heat haze. The village. Arnaud Teulere slowed his Jeep,thinking hard.
Teulere could admit that the chances of the Oracle living in a hut in the northeastern deserts of Niger were . . . remote,to be charitable. But he had been in Africa for a long time, and he had seen stranger things. Besides, there was more hopein his breast than he’d had in years, and perhaps that was worth a nine-hour drive into the wastes. Even a single predictionof the future could be sold for enough to get him back on his feet, to return to France and start over. What else did he haveto spend his time on? Contemplating failure? That had grown tiresome a decade ago, when his uranium mines stopped producing.
The Jeep was now close enough to the village for details to be discerned. It was small, six or seven huts surrounding a wellsunk deep into the earth. Teulere stopped his vehicle and stepped down into the desert. He made a display of pulling his pistolfrom his belt and checking the loads. Only two bullets, but the villagers wouldn’t know that. He didn’t want to start thingson an aggressive note, but he was very far from safety here, and if these people turned out to be hostile, he wanted themto know that he wouldn’t be easily taken.
Teulere holstered his revolver and plodded through the dust toward the village. A group of men walked out to meet him as heapproached. Four of them, in long, light-colored robes, with leather-skinned faces framed by turbans and scarves. Behind them,the rest of the villagers stood and watched, curious. Teulere noted a number of young men—children, really, boys—squattingin the shade of the huts, staring at him with reddened eyes, keeping their balance by leaning on AK-47s planted stock-firstagainst the ground.
The eldest member of the advance party stopped a few feet away and held up a hand. He spoke. Teulere struggled to understand—itwas some kind of Hausa, but thickly accented.
He responded in that language, with a basic greeting. Whether the elder comprehended or not, the old man seemed to know whyhe was there. He curtly gestured for Teulere to follow him, then turned and walked directly to the largest hut in the village.
The boys unfolded themselves, standing and slinging their rifles over their shoulders, holding them loosely. The child soldiersclosed in around Teulere, silent, red-eyed. The only open direction was along the path the elder had taken.
Teulere kept his hands far from his pistol and stepped forward.
The large hut had a hanging cloth for a door. The elder pulled it aside, grinned, showing a set of mottled, wooden teeth,and pointed into the dark depths of the hut.
“Who is there?” Teulere asked the old man in Hausa. No response.
Teulere sighed and ducked into the hut. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. The little round building was cool,almost pleasant after the heat outside.
“Hello, Monsieur,” a voice said in French, from the far side of the hut. Teulere shaded his eyes, peering into the darkness,trying to see who had spoken. He took a step forward.
“Who is it?” he said. “I have come to see the Oracle. Are you he?”
A man was seated on a rug at one end of the hut, surrounded by platters of food, rifles, delicate items of stonework, andother gifts. He looked just like the other villagers—perhaps his clothes were a bit finer, but otherwise he was just a man,about thirty years old.
“Why have you come here?” the man said.
“Talk in the city has it that the Oracle lives here, and that he is willing to sell visions of the future. If this is true,then let us make a deal. I have brought items to trade.”
The man began to laugh and continued for a long ten seconds. Teulere waited, growing more certain every second that he hadwasted his day and several canisters of gasoline he could barely afford.
“My name is Idriss Yusuf. And yes, I am the Oracle,” the man said, his chuckles tapering off. “I was able to predict the daya small plane would crash near here. It was full of supplies stolen from a United Nations outpost in Burkina Faso. My villagehas been eating well ever since. And now, people come to me with their questions about what tomorrow will bring, and I domy best to answer them.”
“So it is true,” Teulere said, feeling a little awed. “But how?”
“How?” the man said. “It is very simple. I am the only man within a hundred kilometers who can read French.”
He laughed again.
Teulere’s mind filled with confusion.
“I don’t understand.”
The Oracle reached to the ground next to him and opened a cloth satchel. He pulled out a newspaper and held it up. Teuleretook a step forward. It was a copy of Le Republicain, dated some months earlier. Prominently featured on the front page was a story about the Oracle, which reprinted the predictionsfrom the Site. One of them—one of the first, date-wise—referred to a plane crashing in the Niger desert.
Teulere understood. The crash had occurred before the Site had truly erupted into the world’s consciousness. Back then, noone would voyage into the trackless wastes of the Niger dust lands on the off chance some American website could predict thefuture. Now, of course, it was different. The location of each of the Site’s predictions had become spots of great interestas their occurrence dates drew near, attracting Oracle tourists from across the world and extensive media coverage.
This man had seen an opportunity and
