The Oracle Year(48)

She wished she could tell them how little it would really matter, and how lucky they were that by and large, they don’t have a damn thing to worry about. Give it ten, twenty years, and life would settle into a steady drone of obligation, punctuated with the occasional peak of joy and pit of worry—things that wouldn’t disappear after spending a few days penciling little dots on an answer sheet.

But even if she tried, they absolutely would not—no, could not believe her. Kids were so focused on the moment they were currently living that they barely understood that the future existed, beyond regularly scheduled events like Christmas, birthdays, and Halloween.

Maybe they’d believe the Oracle, but they sure as hell wouldn’t believe her.

A chime sounded, ringing out from the school’s PA system, and the kids all looked at her, in one synchronized motion, like a bunch of prairie dogs popping their heads from their burrows.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Thank you for a lovely day, everyone.”

The children began the process of assembling their things to head home.

Fifteen minutes later, everyone was properly handed off—no late buses or caregivers today, thank God—and Miko was on the subway, the weight of the envelope in her bag disproportionate to its weight on her mind.

I have to tell Hamza, she thought, gratefully accepting the seat offered to her by an older woman, who gave her a sisterly glance as she stood up. But then . . . maybe I don’t.

Her husband was winding tighter and tighter the longer Will remained out of contact, but it wasn’t just that. He’d found something to occupy himself—some puzzle or question he was trying to work out, and it was making him crazy. He was intently focused on the news, watching and reading. Pieces of scratch paper covered with notes and numbers and circles and arrows were accumulating on every flat surface in their home.

It all had to be Oracle related—everything he did these days was Oracle related—but so far he hadn’t seen fit to explain. He just got more and more stressed out with every article he read.

Miko ran a fingertip over the edge of the envelope in her purse. Its contents might make things better, but they could also make things worse, and she wasn’t sure which way to go with it.

Hamza was brilliant, but because he was brilliant, he assumed that no one else could see the things he saw. And maybe that was true—no one saw everything he saw—but people could see some of it. For instance, she was very aware of how bad it could be for her, him, and their unborn child if the Oracle was outed. The disaster in Uruguay after the murder of José Pittaluga made that point crystal clear. When it came to the Oracle, and anyone connected to him, emotions ran high.

That was why she’d held on to the envelope for a few days. Maybe it was better if the Oracle was out of their lives. But then again, maybe it was better if he wasn’t, so they could at least exert some influence on his choices.

Hamza was sitting at the kitchen table when she walked into their apartment, one hand buried in his dark hair, the other holding a pencil with its tip poised above a yellow legal pad covered with the familiar circles, arrows, and angry scratch-outs. A tablet lay next to the notepad, showing some sort of article. Miko walked over to him, kissing the top of his head. She saw what looked like an offshore oil platform on the screen, surrounded by dense columns of text.

“Hi there,” Miko said.

Hamza set his pencil down and looked up at her.

“Hi,” he said. “Can you sit down? I want to tell you something.”

Miko, instantly wary, took off her coat and slung it over the back of a chair, dropping her purse beside it as she sat.

“Did you figure it out?” she said, gesturing to the notepad. “Whatever it is you’ve been working on?”

Hamza glanced down, frowning. He took a few long, deep breaths, then looked at different parts of the kitchen, then down at his notes, then finally back up at her.

“I don’t know. I want to see what you think.”

He tapped the tablet screen, indicating the oil platform.

“You see this?” he said, swiveling it on the table so she could read it, and then, unsurprisingly, leapt in before she could get through more than a paragraph.

“TransPipe Global, GmBH. Oil company. This article’s about one of their drilling platforms off the coast of Uruguay. Yesterday, it was nationalized as part of the declaration of martial law.”

“Okay,” Miko said. “And?”

“TransPipe is one of our clients. Like . . . ours. You know.”

Miko nodded. She did. An Oracle client.

“We made like two hundred million off them, back at the beginning. Will sold them a prediction that caused them to expand their exploratory drilling on these platforms—they bet huge on it. TransPipe isn’t enormous, as oil companies go. This was a big play for them. All their eggs in one basket, and now they are completely fucked. Those eggs are broken. Or, more accurately, now they belong to Uruguay.”

Hamza now spun the notepad toward her and tapped his pencil on the first circled element, which Miko could now read as containing the word ACTOR.

“It would never have happened absent two things: Will putting up the prediction about Pittaluga on the Site and the Oracle selling a different prediction to TransPipe. We did them both.”

Miko read through the notepad, seeing the path. She looked back up at Hamza.