The chosen women who served the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece on Earth were especially eminent and redoubtable. Their influence was greatly exerted during their long reign into Hellenistic times. A ritual bath in a cold stream, a meal of laurel leaves and the Pythia was ready to resume her place on the tripod chair situated over the chasm which spewed up those noxious and mysterious fumes. To this day, we do not know exactly of what gases those sacred vapors were composed , or indeed, if they affected the Pythia in any way at all. Most surface eruptions of deep seated gas deposits are rich in sulfur. Yet how would a sulfurous trance lower deeply buried psychic shields so that messages, feelings and spiritual essence might be received from the gods and be communicated to man? The worst of the Pythia's prophecies may be explained by the self serving desires of hypocritical priests who chose to interpret the incoherent mutterings of a half-crazed old woman costumed up as a twenty year old virgin. But how to explain the best of such utterances, those uncanningly specific predictions of war, love, hate, death and birth that proceeded to come true? How to explain prescience?

Functioning outside the official religious hierarchy, often scorned by it, but certainly adjunct to it, court astrologers, seers and soothsayers continue to ply their art. Using their sticks and stones, liver and yarrow stalks, tea leaves, celestial maps and tarot cards, they attempt to ascertain the influence of the stars and planets upon our lives, past and future. Interwoven with their celestial concerns, is a concern with the forces generated by mythic deities and those nameless, uncountable energies that perhaps serve to hold together the very fabric of space-time itself.

The shamans and healers of so many tribal cultures certainly acted as vessels for the reception of both the past and future directions of space-time. Their vision was, perhaps, the most honest of all, as its exercise was devoid of the possibilities for significant material reward. Living within a small group and all the while participating in mundane daily activities, certainly creates the most difficult structure imaginable within which to preserve and promote an aura of extra sensory capacity and supernatural relationships. There is also the necessity of survival, and being right at least some of the time on important matters. The Delphi Oracle could choose not to appear for a year or more, if the circumstances warranted. The court astrologer or soothsayer could, at the very least, increase the level of ambiguity in interpretation and multiply alternatives endlessly.

However, the shaman lived with the people of the village, eating, sleeping, surviving and loving with them. The shaman was also known as both an individual and a receiver/transmitter of the space-time forces. Existing on two planes simultaneously, one within, the other beyond and transcendent of the culture, the shaman became the mirror of the people. This reality was naked to all, the pain of it apparent to all. The rewards lay in the love, status and respect of the tribe which was freely given for such services rendered. The ultimate resource lies in the power of the niche, an intangible, non material but deeply textured power. Could you or I bear the pressure, indeed the obligation, to perceive and correctly interpret the very fabric of space-time itself? Could we of this century survive such an intimate, incessant, ever demanding, and above all, honest confrontation? Would not we of this technologically miraculous, but spiritually barren, relativistic - oh God, everything is relative - age simply die if placed in the position, the life, of the Apa’gakh, the great Nunivak Eskimo shaman?

Earth, of course, does not exhaust all the possibilities one might envisage for seers and oracles. One planet could hardly do that; I doubt if an entire galaxy would suffice. My personal favorite is the oracular trees of Thyme. The first scientists to experience them quickly dubbed them the ‘FFTs’, which stands for Fortune Telling Trees. After they predicted the defeat of the Federation of Hominid Planets’ military forces by the Gorgon Empire, they became known as ‘GDFTs’ - god damn fucking trees. Unfair say I: we should have listened to them and perhaps avoided what amounted to an intergalactic race war.

One thing I cannot fathom is why a bunch of overgrown plants should care which is the dominant animal in their corner of the galaxy. I know you’re thinking that talking trees are ridiculous. Only animals with nervous systems are supposed to be able to communicate with sounds and language. Well, those damn trees can communicate with audible language and after two centuries of study by the foremost botanists and zoologists in the galaxy, no one has the slightest idea of how they function. They certainly do not have nervous systems that can be detected by anatomical investigation. Imagine trying to keep the details of your latest love affair private on a planet which is covered with a literal grapevine that makes predictions in any animal language it hears! Well, I didn’t like the situation and Sarah and Ann couldn’t cope with it at all. Two months after our arrival on Thyme they jumped the next freighter out to anywhere. Can’t say I didn’t blame them, but what a loss of sweet loving and incredible cooking! Why didn’t I leave with them? Don't ask!

What about the Gorgons? They could be worse, especially when considering they look like small bipedal dinosaurs or overgrown lizards. They doubled taxes and demanded that all Federation military craft be captained by a Gorgon. And that is all they wanted, or so it seems, in this buffer zone at the tail end of their empire. They never asked for or took natural resources or slaves and they hardly need our technology. Keep to themselves, they do, and are reserved and uncommunicative, yet also polite without being taciturn. They treat us the way we often treat our pet dogs or cats, if you subtract out the affection. Makes you wonder what they need us to buffer against in this galaxy backwater.

I have had an awful premonition for several years that some unimaginable horror is going to attack this end of the galaxy to get at the Gorgons and that we, that is the Federation of Hominid Planets, now exist merely to be the wall upon which that onslaught will fall. The idea of being a sacrificial lamb for anybody, mammal or reptile, has no appeal to either me or Admiral Ansala, for that matter.

Perhaps it is time that I introduced myself. I can’t tell you my name,but my outward professional job - escape from reality call it what you will - I will briefly describe. My rank is colonel, but only five admirals have authority over what I do, along with the Federation Prime Minister. Officially, I’m attached to military intelligence as a diplomat and negotiations expert. I’m the guy they call in when everyone in the room is about to declare war on one another, issue challenges for duels at dawn, slap faces with white hankies, threaten economic boycotts and proceed to indulge in the usual nonsense heads of state resort to when they perceive that their national security (self interest?, self image?) is threatened. Supposedly, I can cool such situations down, get everybody smiling and talking rationally. What I really do beyond that cannot be told here or anywhere.

So be it, may the gods be cursed.