Welch had ordered.Temple steps. Brackish water in green and murky pools, barely reflecting Paradise’s ruddy light. The temple caretakers must not venture out much.A fresh-faced female acolyte, nubile in her green linen chiton, appeared from shadows and led him through an anteroom, past white marble benches, to a bronze door, ten feet tall, with bas relief scenes from Greek mythology. Vintage old-dead theatrics.Doors opened before them, anticipating their approach like sentries, channelizing their progress until they stood in a big domed chamber: hundred foot ceiling; central dais of dead-black marble. Nice touches. So were the gold sconces for unlit torches every ten feet. Very Hollywood, or very Greek, or very overdone – take your pick. Light shone from behind Corinthian cornices.On the dais sat a throne, carved from the biggest chunk of rock crystal Nichols had ever seen. And on the throne sat the oracle herself, mostly naked, too sexy and too muscular by half: golden nimbus glowing from her skin.The oracle said in a ringing voice, “You wish to know the Nature of Time. What you ask is not without price. What does my lord offer in payment?”Nature of Time? Shit, she knew before I asked.Nichols replied, “My lord, Satan himself, requests the information.”The oracle was staring at him as if his face held the key to eternal salvation, which it sure as hell didn’t. But he had to say something more, because she was waiting for it…. “Oracle, my lord will allow you a just reward – if you tell us what we want to know. Something valuable, something relevant to stabilizing time perturbations.”At this the sibyl raised both hands flat before her, and the lights went out. All that could be seen was her nimbus and the water atop the altar, bathed from below in a luminous glow.Silently the Delphic Oracle rose and bent over the water on the altar, staring into it.She babbled in a hushed tone: first in ancient Greek, then in a language he didn’t recognize. He understood some Greek: fighting in Tartaros beside Alexander and his heroes, Nichols had learned Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic old dead, but he was at a loss to understand this gibberish. Too bad Welch wasn’t here: his boss had had lots more linguistic training….The oracle started calling out numbers and what sounded like equations. Nichols pulled out his hellphone and keyed the video function for later analysis by linguists because he couldn’t go back to Welch saying the oracle blabbed her head off but he had no idea what she said.Then something went very wrong. Her hushed tones turned cacophonous. She was shuddering, writhing; contorting her body, tearing at her face and eyes; screaming and shrieking.“Kill me,”
