The Oracle Year(50)

“They won’t clean while I’m in here, and I don’t want to leave. I paid for a month in advance so they won’t bother me.”

Hamza thought about this.

“You’ve just . . . been in the room?”

“Mostly. Bad things happen sometimes when I go out there.”

Hamza also thought about this, then looked at Miko. She shook her head slowly, helplessly.

“How did you figure out where I was?” Will asked Miko.

“It was easy, Will,” Miko said. “I hired a PI, told him to look for hits on the name Will Dando in places you might go, with Oracle-related stuff high on the list. He found you here, and then Hamza bribed the desk clerk for your room number.”

Hamza stepped forward.

“You are not safe, Will. You are not anonymous.”

“Oh, I’m safe. Trust me on that. But . . . why? Why did you go to all that trouble?”

Hamza looked at him in disbelief.

“Will, I haven’t heard from you in six weeks. No calls, texts, e-mails . . . why the fuck do you think I’ve been looking for you? I thought you were de—”

His voice cracked. He turned away, pushed a pile of dirty towels and old newspapers off a chair and sat down.

Will collapsed onto the bed. He was looking at Miko, his face tight.

“Is it really so bad that I know you’re the Oracle, Will?” she said. “I mean, at least you’ll have someone other than my husband to talk to about all this, right? I mean . . .”

Will’s face relaxed a bit, the side of his mouth twitching upward.

“Heh,” he said. “Yeah. He’s no picnic.”

“Don’t I know it,” Miko said, smiling.

Hamza watched this exchange, marveling, as always, at his wife’s ability to smoothly navigate situations that he would manage with brute force, assuming he could manage them at all.

“I’m not mad that you know, Miko,” Will said. “I’m afraid.”

Will ran a hand through his hair, resulting in a brand-new clump pointing toward the ceiling. He flopped down on the bed, threatening to upset a tray of half-eaten food sitting on the fumbles of sheet and bedspread. He reached out and grabbed a half-eaten piece of toast from the room-service tray.

“Oh, Will, that looks like it’s a week old,” Miko said. “Don’t eat—”

Will crunched down on the toast, chewing absently.

“I didn’t mean to, you know, drop off the grid,” he said. “I just needed some time. I was getting . . . overwhelmed. I went to Florida, and then I just decided I’d come down here to see José Pittaluga perform. No big plan. Just a . . . a whim. I was there in the theater when it happened. When he was killed. I took the concierge with me. And I stayed, while the country went nuts. You know people here are all freaked out about it? Uruguay’s supposed to be a stable country. This is very out of character for them.”

Will looked at the piece of toast in his hand, apparently considering a second bite, then tossed it back on the tray.

“I put up those warnings on the Site, and I saved people, sure, but people just keep dying, don’t they? It’s like a tennis game. The Site kills some people, so I save some people, and then the Site kills some more. Back and forth. Back and forth.”

“So why is it still up?” Hamza asked. “We have an exit plan. We can take it down whenever we want.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve already put so many predictions into the world—you think people would just forget them if I took down the Site? No. None of them are going away, ever. Whatever’s going to happen because of those predictions is going to happen. Taking down the Site wouldn’t change anything. It’ll do what it wants.”

Hamza looked closely at his friend.

“You just referred to the Site like it’s alive, Will. Twice. Why did you do that?”

“Because I think it is, Hamza. In its own way.”

Hamza considered. A week ago, he’d have taken this statement as evidence that Will had finally cracked under Oracle-related pressures. But now . . . it sounded pretty goddamn plausible.

“Things went nuts down here after Pittaluga died. I couldn’t really go anywhere for a while—it was too dangerous even to get a cab to the airport. So I just stayed here, and I watched it all happen out the window, and I thought. And sitting there, watching things burn and hearing gunfire and knowing I was a part of it, I ended up asking myself a question. Over and over again.”

He looked at Hamza and Miko, his eyes hollow.

“Whoever or whatever is the source of the Oracle dream can see the future. Or they’re in the future, looking back. Whatever. So . . .”

Will gestured toward the window, in a sweeping flail of his hand that Hamza took to signify the chaos in the city beyond.

“. . . couldn’t they see all this coming?”

He dropped his hand.

“And if they could see it, then why would they want it? Why wouldn’t they try to stop it? Hell, the Site gave me that prediction. The Site caused this. It wanted it. And everything else that’s happened since I put it up.”

Will stood up suddenly. A half-full glass of water on the room service tray teetered and fell, adding to the mess. Will ignored it. He stood up and walked across the room, bending to rifle through the pile of newspapers and printouts Hamza had shoved to the floor when he sat down.