He looked back at the TV, where an oh-so-dignified Daniel Green was watching the Jew and the Arab shake hands.
It included the president of the United States, who had most assuredly cut ties with Reverend Hosiah Branson.
It included the entire world.
Everyone but Brother Jonas, at any rate. He visited fairly often. The man had proven to be loyal, when all was said and done.
Not that his loyalty would gain him all that much. Poor man had backed the wrong horse.
Branson looked down at his tray. On it was a yellowish puddle of instant mashed potatoes, a fleshy pile of limp, overcookedgreen beans, and a gray slab of protein covered by a splat of thick, sewagey sauce.
It was inedible. All of it. You just had to season the hell out of it and hope for the best.
Branson reached for his government-issued spork, made of a bendable nylon/plastic mix that could under no circumstances everbe used as a weapon.
It was August 23. It was Sunday. And so, it was Salisbury Steak Day.
He looked up again at the other prisoners. Now, many of them were looking at him, nudging each other.
They knew what day it was, too. They were Oracle tourists, in their way.
All around, men started to stand from their seats. The guards moved in from the edges of the room, unlimbering weapons fromtheir belts, but they didn’t stop the prisoners as they moved into a loose circle around Branson, sitting alone at his table.
The guards glanced at each other, then stepped forward, joining the prisoners.
Branson stared at them all, watching silently, their faces still and expectant.
Well, look at this, he thought. The Oracle gave me back my audience.
He looked back up at the television, which was continuing to discuss the Oracle Effect in all its many world-altering forms.Goddamn Will Dando, still running the world, even though he hadn’t appeared in public since that stunt in Denver and hadn’tcommunicated at all beyond his last, one-word update to the Site. One word, and it changed everything.
Everything.
The Oracle Effect. Goddamn Will Dando, still running the world.
Branson moved his eyes back to the lump of meat on his tray.
I still have a choice, he thought. No one’s making me do this. I have free will.
He reached for the pepper shaker placed conveniently close to his plate and heard a rustle of movement among the assembledwatchers.
What if I just . . . don’t? he asked himself. Word would get out. I could still do exactly what I was planning all along. The Oracle’s just a man. I know it.
He looked up at the men standing around him, not meeting anyone’s eyes, just taking their emotional temperature. Excitement.The beginnings of impatience. Certainty.
They know what I’m going to do. The Oracle said it, and they believe it, and that’s that.
But I can show them they’re wrong. I still have free will, he thought again. I have a choice.
He stared at the pepper shaker in his hand. He did have a choice. But he knew what would happen to him if he disobeyed theOracle in front of these men who were so deeply invested in their prophet’s infallibility. He would be made to season hissteak as specified, and there would be pain then and pain to follow. Punishment for his defiance.
These people believed, certainly more strongly than anyone Branson had ever touched with his ministry. They wanted to see the Oracle’s enemy broughtlow with their own eyes. The prediction would come true, one way or the other. They would see to it.
The easy way, or the hard, cripplingly painful way. That was his actual choice, his only choice. It didn’t matter what hebelieved, and it didn’t matter what the Oracle was, god or man.
The things he said came true.
Reverend Hosiah Branson put pepper on his steak. He replaced the shaker on the table, lifted his spork, and carved himselfa bite.
Epilogue: Tomorrow
Leigh shaded her eyes and peered out across the water, looking for three curved palm trees, partially uprooted by some long-paststorm so that they hung low over the beach, nearly horizontal, like permanent, natural limbo sticks. The few channels intothe shore weren’t visible above the waterline—the sovereign nation of the Coral Republic was, in fact, ringed by a large coralreef, and the only safe way through was marked by the limbo palms.
A concrete pier jutted roughly a hundred yards into the sea from the beach, with mooring slips jutting out from the main pierat right angles. Once she was through the gate in the coral, Leigh spun her boat’s wheel to angle toward the nearest slip.She could see a figure walking along the beach to the pier to meet her. She smiled, but turned her attention back to bringingthe boat in safely.
Several vessels were already docked at the pier—a motorboat that was too small for Leigh to feel comfortable using alone inthe open ocean, and a palatial, screw-you-I’m-rich yacht that was too large for her to pilot by herself. Leigh thought Hamzahad acquired the yacht just for the sheer satisfaction of owning a boat that big.
She was driving the Florida Lady, a thirty-foot fishing boat. Leigh thought of it as hers, although technically she supposed it belonged to the Oracle organization.Will rarely took it out to any of the nearby islands. Too many people would recognize him, even down here.
Hamza had arranged the Republic as its own country—she wasn’t clear on the details—but the upshot was that it had its ownset of laws, and it very pointedly had no extradition treaties. As long as the Oracle remained on the sandy ground of theCoral Republic, he was—in theory—legally untouchable.
As Leigh pulled the throttle back to idling speed and inched the Lady forward into the mooring slip, she glanced to her right, where a short way back into the jungle off the beach, the orangetile roofs of what she and Will had both come to call the
