Virginia Hamilton (9 page)

“Oh, yes, it was replaced long ago,” said Celester. “But the other Celesters, as you called them—they appear to be my duplicates, but they are not. I am Master-function for this Origin.” Pausing, his eyes burned intensely with laser light. The beam of it melted into pale liquid depths. “I analyze information. I create from intuitive sense in order to instruct truly intelligent machines, and the human forms you see, and others. All human forms that look like my duplicates are color-coded as to function. At dysfunction, skin color changes.”

“Intelligent machines!” Levi whispered. “But they won’t need you. They’ll replace you with a whole machine.”

Merry laughter came from deep within Celester. It did not seem to come out of his mouth. “The replacement of human brains took place early on. Machines were built to replace them. The machines did well. They organized and associated data, retrieving information according to content. Neuristor computers and prima perceptrons, most complicated machines, accepted fuzzy data just as humans’ brains had done. But machines carried out non-rigorous operations at fantastic speeds. Oh, yes, you might say that machines became as ‘tricky’ as the magic of Thomas.” Again he laughed a deep laugh.

“With a flick and a flack,” Celester continued, “machines moved tons of supplies, invented airmobiles and spacers. They anticipated all human needs. And, finally, they themselves built a machine of perfection. Perfection built the spaceships.”

Someone gasped. The four looked shocked.

“Wait a minute!” Thomas managed to say.

“It is a long story,” Celester gently toned. They found that now they understood him whenever he toned. He gave a muted progression of soothing chords which calmed them. “Let us find a comfortable place for talking,” Celester suggested. “We will go to the terraces above the hydrafields. There are vistas you have not seen; and we will take sustenance there.”

“He means we’re going to eat,” Dorian said.

“We know what he means,” said Thomas.

“Here, here!” all at once Celester toned to the air. “Let come the sunshine!”

He touched his chest. Justice saw that a series of tiny designs was worked into his chest skin. Celester pressed a finger to a circle and a thumb to a rectangle.

Bright sunlight broke through the dim day of domity.

“Sun-time,” said the Speaker, all around them. “Sun-time. Beats at your command.”

“Just so. We will extend the primary into darkly,” Celester toned. “The humans of Sona will not mind. Life is so pleasant, whether lightly or darkly.” His vibrating, sweet tune swept over them as he synchronized the symbols of his chest.

A shiny glass tube glided to a stop before them. It hovered a few inches above the Oneway.

“It is called mobi,” said Celester.

The mobi hovered in place. One of its glass partitions slid back. Celester ushered them inside, where it was refreshingly cool. He explained that the transparent “glass” resisted solar penetration. “It is silitrex,” he told them, “known for its strength, opacity and light weight.”

The mobi had cushioned seats in curved rows. The rear was covered by a curtain hung across it.

“You will find suitable pull-ons—er, clothing—behind the screen,” Celester told them. “Clothing and screen are made of same fiber as domusi. Fibers absorb uncleanliness and shed it as dust-waste, which we utilize as fuel. Little need for bathing here in Sona. Please help yourselves to clothing.”

They felt obliged to step behind the curtain. The boys went in together; then Justice. Celester was perplexed, then amused by the apparent separation of the four by sex, when they were all the same kind.

T
HE MOBI RUSHED, CAUSING
whistling wind-sounds on either side. Celester copied the sounds with perfect vocalizing to amuse them. They watched silently as the mobi passed through two gates on rising levels leading to the Midway. At Midway they left Sona’s dwelling area and headed toward open expanses. They sat in summer robes, seeing a broad scenic view. Shortly after, the mobi glided still. The side opened. They were on another platform, similar to the one outside the tunnel chamber. They stepped out and saw a different Sona.

It was an area of land divided into vast plots of growing things.

“It’s … it’s … home!” Justice whispered.

“Soil,” said Thomas, “black as it can be!”

It might have been some rural county in the Midwest. Justice hoped it might be the future of her own Greene County. A familiar, sweet landscape, dark and calm under the glowing dome.

“I’m glad it grows so well,” she said.

“Just so,” toned Celester. “Our kind of people do favor soil. It is the reason we make the effort to reclaim the outside. Other domities do not bother. Instead, they invent environments and the conditions to make them habitable for the kinds they engineer. But our kinds here are made from the untethered humankind, most content with landscape and natural elements.”

“You say
made?”
said Levi.

“Yes, duplicated,” said Celester, “And altered, manipulated for the necessary result.”

“Celester, you talk about ‘our kind’ needing this and ‘we’ do that. But you’re not speaking about yourself, are you?” Justice asked.

“ ‘Our kind’ are the humans entrusted to us,” he toned. “By ‘we’ I mean those who are computerized functions. I myself am a product of negative eugenics combined with advanced electronics. My prototype brain cared for science and technology. I am no harvester, no farman—er, farmer. Pastoral not I.”

“But you must value this farming,” Justice said, “or there wouldn’t be all this.” She gestured out over the enormous, fertile plain that lay below them.

“We learn that environchange enhances the human’s emotional life,” toned Celester. “Humans need emotions for survival. Ones such as the most Hellal IX lie in terragrass and fall asleep from contentment images suggested by the damp green smell. Freshly cut terragrass causes hearts to leap; causes laughter, happiness. I recall happiness. But I lack the content in my brain cells for great emotion. All to the good. Memory is enough.”

They gazed out over the plain and felt their own hearts skip at the sight of land so similar to home. Yet there were differences. Plants were suspended above silitrex troughs hundreds of feet long. The troughs were shallow. A liquid flowed through them, and the roots of the plants were immersed in the liquid.

Celester spoke, “We calculate that in your time hydraponics such as you see below were an expensive method of planting without soil. You found it troublesome aerating the liquid and supporting plants in an upright position.”

“Well, your plants don’t seem to have any supports at all,” Levi said.

Thomas laughed nervously. He had caught on. “Mind control, man,” he said to Levi. “The plants are
spellbound!”

“It is machine control,” Celester toned. “A truly intelligent machine knows how a living system, whether man, plant or universe, makes use of information. Environ machines are at work on the hydrafields. They invent environments and compute with other kinds of machines problems and the solutions their inventions bring. Our premise is always that no situation is entirely new.”

They watched him, awed and fascinated, as their minds rose to the level of his meaning.

“Environ machines think for themselves,” he toned. “Once they decide on a system, such as hydraponics, they do what is necessary to make it work, which might mean tapping into a mentex, a mind-over-matter machine, for the necessary formulas.”

Celester pulled himself in. Suddenly he was still, as if his life-spirit had completely left him. Justice divined that he was giving information and taking it in. Scanning him, she discovered that his mind calculated at lightning speed in unknown symbols.

Is somebody telling him what to do?
Thomas traced to her.

Not that I can tell. I don’t think so,
she traced back.
But he’s in contact with someone
…
something
…
somewhere else.

Just when they were growing uneasy standing with this cyborg gone dead as a pole, he abruptly came to and was back with them.

“Ah so!” he toned. “All truly intelligent machines were created and built by Starters.”

And before any one of them could ask what Starters were, he exclaimed, “Just so! Follow me. At terrace we will have hellelu; and then the feast.” He leaped to the lead, gliding ahead of them.

In spite of all his misgivings, Thomas was intensely curious. He hurried to catch up with Celester to walk at his side.

“What’s a hellelu?” they heard Thomas ask.

“You will be surprised,” was Celester’s reply.

Justice and Levi and Dorian plunged into a waist-high fernbrake. Feathery rust-colored plantings grew on either side of a well-worn path of fibers made into a walkway.

“Nice,” said Dorian. “The walk relaxes your feet. See? You sink down.” He took off his shoes. “Sure! Feel how it massages you.”

“Don’t talk to me about feet!” Levi said irritably. It was not like him to sound so upset. “If they can give us bodies,” he said, “why can’t they make their own food and dispense with having it grow on plants?”

“It’s not the same thing,” Justice said.

“You believe they gave us our bodies? Here?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe they keep unformed globs of life somewhere. When we entered the future out there, somehow they knew it, maybe. They figured out our individual formulas and placed them in the four globs. Maybe they grew them, transported them and fitted them to our minds in seconds. I say they did. I say that, for the first time in the known world, there is real
magic!”

“But if they knew we entered the future,” Dorian said, “how come they didn’t know Duster and the rest were out there?”

“Because they probably monitor the Crossover to see what’s coming. Well, I don’t know it all. But I bet it’s something like that.”

“So why do they need plants or food?” Levi wanted to know. “If they’re so great, why don’t they duplicate themselves with their bellies forever full? Why even bother with life? Why not start at the end—Oh, brother, I don’t know what I’m saying!”

Pointing at the plain below, Justice said, “I bet machines went outside and found enough particles in the ground to start plant-life again. Then they developed the best plants. Because humans have to have plants and grass and food for their
spirit.
You can’t just serve them little pills of food and stuff. And all of it done in that breakneck speed—that’s what’s so fantastic about computer machines.”

“Do you ... do you think there was war?” Levi said. It had been on his mind, making him irritable. There was that troubling thought that life on earth had ended and then been re-created in this Origin. “Is Dustland the whole world? Asia and Europe and everywhere? With just the domes as what’s left of the living?”

“Well, I mean to ask,” Justice said. “I don’t really want to. Who wants to know that part? But we have to, don’t we?”

Levi sighed, and nodded. Dorian, being healer, projected soothing thoughts to them. He touched their shoulders and brought calming insight to them. Levi thought to tell them how really well he felt.

“Something in the air does it. I feel better, too,” Dorian said. “Lee, I bet you’ll be real better when we get back home.”

They hurried to catch up with Celester and Thomas, who were talking quietly as they strolled along.

“Excuse me,” Justice said, “but I want to know where you’re taking us, Celester. And what happened to everybody?”

Celester turned his pale, liquid gaze on her. They, had stopped now, bunched around Celester on the path.

“I mean you no harm,” he toned, with such vibrant melody Justice felt almost ashamed of herself for questioning him.

Celester tilted his head toward her. There was a warm, deepening shade in his eyes. And if it were possible for a face without expression to smile, his did, through his eyes. Gently he reached out and touched her cheek.

She suddenly felt like the kid she was back home, needing someone to protect her. Celester. Someone like her dad. Her dad and her mom.

Home!

But the moment of longing passed as swiftly as it had come. She was moving again along the walkway with the others and Celester. Feathery plantings fell away and left off completely. They walked within splendid gardens that were part of terraced lands. The huge terraces were landscaped into stairs leading to the hydrafields below. Lovely, scented plantings carpeted the terraces. Trees were uniformly small and neat, silver, green or orange. Water bubbled from the ground, flowing in a stream down the terraces.

Creatures the size of chipmunks and the color of lemons, with the transparent, shiny wings of dragonflies, darted here and there among the foliage.

Taking it all in, the four sat down, gingerly making themselves comfortable in a circular area of low, spongy ground cover. They were bunched close together. Here they felt strongly the presence of the dome, with themselves locked within it. The domity had a murmuring, vibrating sound. They sensed the thudding of hydrapumps. The undercurrent of sound, the sunshine and shade made them feel lightheaded.

Where had the shade come from? Justice wondered. She looked up, seeing fluffy clouds above the terraces. Gentle rain caught in the sun rays before falling like a mist onto the terraces. Light and shade, misty rain, thudding and murmuring of pumps and the alien landscaping produced an atmosphere beyond mystery.

“It can rain in a dome?” Dorian whispered, barely moving his lips.

“It can,” responded Celester, kneeling beside them. “It can snow as well. Most atmos phenomena can happen in domity. We do compute the most suitable climate for all. Yet the soil plain, human breathing and perspiration often change the balance. We constantly readjust climate.”

Darkest shades hung above the far fields. Rain sprayed, sparkling in the sunlight. They heard a clear voice in the distance. It was a golden, angel sound, yet somehow artificial. The Voice sang in falsetto with tones trembling in a high register. As the sound grew louder, they could tell it was too full for solo singing.

Out of the gray underbelly of a full-blown cloud came a floating vehicle. It hung motionless in space, slightly above them, out of their reach. The vehicle was made of some kind of light metal and was shaped like an old-fashioned washtub. Inside it were six boys, kneeling. All of them were Hellal IX’s. All would have been exactly alike if it hadn’t been for one who was slightly out of line with the others. He was small and peaked-looking. His skin looked pale and ghostly. They knew him at once. He was their Duster, cleaned and scrubbed.