The Oracle's Prophecy

14

Buttoning his coat and straightening his uniform, Sheriff Tuatura of Metropolitan Twenty-Eight – a scaley with a beak-shaped head – dashed up the steps of the Widener Library and brushed past the armed guards holding the thick steel doors open.

Suffering from centuries of neglect the once impressive building could now only hint at its previous majesty. No one was alive to remember a time when the pillars along its colonnade weren't cracked and exposing metal rods holding them in place, or when the floor-to-ceiling windows weren't bricked up. Nor could anyone recall when the decorative finishings and marble paneling inside hadn't been stripped bare by looters, and the walls stained black from a thousand cooking fires. This was all anyone thought of the place today though.

Inside a boy was ringing a hand-bell and counting down the time till the gateway had to be ready. They had just over a minute.

"Is the portaller inside?" Tuatura asked one of the guards when he reached the second set of thick steel doors.

"He's coming now." Standing behind a metal bucket that was quickly collecting rainwater from a crack in the ceiling, the guard gestured toward a set of stairs that led down to the basement. Half-marched, half-dragged by two ratty looking guards, the crumpled form of a man appeared.

The portaller.

At Tuatura's command, the second set of metal doors were pulled apart and the men groaned their disapproval when a rolling-cloud of muggy vapor poured out and enveloped them.

Damn this machine, the sheriff cursed as he pressed forward and ascended the stairs. The gateway needed steam power to drive the multiple wheels ringing the shell. At full rotation, the wheels magnified a portaller's abilities a thousandfold and made it possible for him to create portals across a nation. This was all well and good, but it turned the chamber into a damn sauna.

The portal machine was a massive sphere, twenty-five feet in diameter and the men had spent weeks gutting the building in order to fit it inside.

"Open the shell!" Tuatura ordered as they crossed the gangway, his body disappearing as it passed through a jet of steam.

Nodding his head, one of the gateway operators pushed a lever and the two sections of the sphere separated.

In the center was an isolation tank, big enough to fit a man. The rest of the space was empty, but could accommodate as many as a hundred people if it had to.

Lowering himself from high above with bungee-pulleys, the senior operator, a bald and pasty looking man whose body emitted an acrid smell from being in such humid conditions, greeted everyone with a slap of his right-hand against his chest.

"Conformity and ob..."

"Tell me we'll have the gateway ready in time?" The sheriff interrupted.

"We should have the machine running." The operator said confidently but looked anything but.

The sheriff watched on as the other operators frantically scurried around above in an attempt to reset the machine. No one needed to be reminded it'd be all of their necks if they failed. The sheriff's especially as he'd been using it illegally to make a little money on the side – all the metropole sheriffs did it.

"The transmission will come from Metropolitan Fifteen. Don't mess this one up, Portaller." Tuatura hissed at the man in rags as they stepped into the shell.

Inside, three operators were busy turning a hand-wheel to rotate the isolation tank so it faced the correct axis.

"If I only had more time to rest..." The portaller began but was cut-off when his worn cloak was stripped off him to reveal an emaciated body underneath.