Realizing the risks were high, she opted for something that wasn’t controversial. If alarm bells did go off, she could plead curiosity and if the oracle logged her query then at least it wouldn’t be too hard to explain.
She touched the cool metal and held her breath.
No electric shocks. No alarms. In fact, nothing. She waited for something to leap into her mind, a foreign voice or an image of something that resembled a computer. What the hell was a computer to these aliens anyway? They referred to the oracle as a repository of knowledge, an encyclopedia.
I am the horizon.
The strange thought entered her head and lodged itself there. The thought wasn’t hers though. The oracle had answered her question. Okay, she now knew it understood her. So think carefully... it read her thoughts so...
You lack clarity. Please rephrase your query.
Cheeky thing.
I do not understand. Please rephrase your query.
She shuffled forward. The oracle was shouting at her, or so it seemed. But everything was happening in her head. Focus...
Is a means to clarify. I concur. Please rephrase—
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—”
Profanity. Please rephrase your query.
“Where are Jago and Kriss,” she whispered.
The current location of personnel named Jago and Kriss is their primary station.
Okay... where the hell was that?
Hell is not their location.
Please clarify their current location, she thought very hard about that question and imagined her two nestors side by side. The oracle immediately bounced back an image, not words in her head. The image was of two uniformed men inside a dark building. She thought she heard voices. Was that a woman’s voice?
Her most divine majesty, the queen. Mother of all men.
Jago and Kriss were with the queen?
They guard her.
She leapt back away from the globe. Her heart twins were the queen’s guardians? How amazing was that? It meant they worked in the incubator hub and had access to the very information she needed.
The tingling in her hand slowly dissipated. The globe was silent, inert. She shook her head, as if to dislodge the last fragments of the alien computer from her mind. She was quite alone again.
She half-expected the door to spring open and for her nestors to rush in, or possibly some enforcement droid with a gun. She waited, breathing heavily. Nothing happened. The oracle wasn’t rigged with sensors, or none that warranted immediate investigation. Dare she probe again?
She decided to wait. She had a headache. A thought crossed her tired mind. Every house probably had an oracle. And nobody seemed to lock their doors. She rose, crossed over to the vast window, and identified the house where she’d witnessed the Hunger. If she could gain access to that place, maybe...
The door behind her opened. She hurried over, throwing off her tunic and knelt before the two men.
“She’s gorgeous,” Kriss said. “I still can’t believe she’s ours.”
Jago touched the crown of her head. “Did you have a restful day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your cheeks are flushed.” Jago walked over to the sensor panel and tapped it.
“Has she?” Kriss asked, too keenly.