Virginia Hamilton (8 page)

Others began singing. Duster, Siv and Glass, the packens, the figure of a man that was not quite a man, and even Miacis—at least, she tried. All lifted their voices. Harmonious tones filled the chamber. The tremulous toning of grims and the haw-haw of Slakers were almost sweet. An informal musical agreement seemed to have brought unity to those of Dustland and Sona.

“Sona!”
sang the figure. “Accord. We be one song!”

“But what of discord?” asked the unit. “What of those who wish not to sing with you?”

The figure did not respond. Its pale, liquid eyes gave no reflection. Harmonizing and chording of so many voices carried on. Then suddenly it ceased. Duster was with Miacis and the gyldan. He strolled toward the chamber opening in the distance, one hand clutching Miacis’ fur. He turned, searching for the unit. His expression was unsettled, changing. “Be coming on?” he toned to the unit.

What of discord?
the unit traced to all who might receive its telepathy.

The figure gathered the packens, grims, Slakers and Siv and Glass around it for an orderly exit.

The unit let go its hands, releasing its selves from one mind. The Watcher faded within Justice.

“You think we ought to separate when we don’t know what will happen?” Thomas asked.

“We can join again fast enough,” Justice told him.

There came the figure’s lilting voice: “Are you not coming?” it intoned. Alien eyes saw into the tracks of their veins and sinews of muscle. “You have come so far,” it said to the four. “Odd that you come through the outside when all travelers enter first through Sona. But ... do feel free. I assure you, we are harmless. There is much to see. Let me show you our domity!”

Wordlessly, with caution, they followed the blue-green figure, tall and lean, who moved on legs and feet, yet did not walk. Justice wondered about the fact that they were somehow different travelers. Odd, the figure had said.

Nearing the chamber end, they saw an agreeable dimness of light. The outside was an arc.

“Here is our domity,” said the figure. “Come,” it beckoned. “I am called Celester. Be my guests!”

F
OR
J
USTICE
D
OUGLASS, A
perfect day at home was waking to the sound of birds in summer. It was the brilliance of sunlight when she opened her eyes. It was the closeness of humid heat in her room and the luxury of falling asleep again for as long as she wanted.
No school!
She would wake for good late in the morning and catch a delicious scent of blackberries wafting through the window screens.

A perfect day was the sound of cars and trucks on dusty Dayton Street. It was the grand cottonwood tree at the end of her driveway—she’d named it Cottonwoman and it was her surest, safest vision. She would speak to the tree as the wind rode its topmost branches: “Put on your shawl, Cottonwoman, for it’s just so cool up there!”

Best of all, a perfect day was the dappled light and dark in the ancient hedgerow by her home. Sunlight turning the summer grasses the palest green, and spring black-soil fields, a glisten of licorice shades. One perfect day led into another and another. That was the best about life on earth, you could depend on it. And she loved riding her bike through the hours of perfect days. Riding, stroking through the heat, was what being alive meant, being young and strong, being in the 1980s and a kid, and having birthdays and growing. Human, being on earth, spinning in space around the sun, at the present time …

If she’d ever thought about it, which she hadn’t. Not until now—the future moment when they stepped out of the chamber, with Dustland far behind them.

Had there ever been a Dustland? she wondered, but knew there had.

They were on a horizontal surface some ten feet above the ground.

Justice guessed she’d been thinking about perfect days at home because of what lay before her. It was probably a perfect day for a place of the future.

Sona.

And because Thomas had just said to her, “You’ll never grow a tomato in this light. Is this the future also?” he added.

“This is Sona,” said Celester. “It is future, if you wish.” He stood a pace in front. With such extended eyes he saw them without bothering to turn. “Sona is a place of itself. There are places on other courses that are not the same. But all are planned domity.”

“What is domity?” asked Levi, his voice hushed. What lay before them was vast and still.

“It is dome and city,” Celester said. With a thin arm that was definitely green in the dimness, he gestured toward the curve of the great dome over them.

“You put a dome right over a city this size?” said Dorian.

“Domes and cities were built at the same time, ages ago,” Celester said. “We have efficient control within the domities.”

“Wait, where are we? Are we underground?” asked Thomas.

“You are on earth,” said Celester, “the same as before.”

They were silent, looking at everything and stunned by it all.

A roadway system traversed Sona. An incline led from the platform where they stood to a ground-level road. Celester informed them that the ground-level was called Oneway. Justice and the others recognized it as the road on which they had entered Duster’s dream.

There were inclines from the Oneway level to Midway, and from there to the Highway, the topmost level of the triway. The Highway hung suspended at the height of the great dome. High up, support strands glinted in the dimness; they were like giant harpstrings, bracing every level.

Dustlanders were boarding a moving incline from the Oneway level, which carried them to the higher levels. Male Slakers, standing on the incline, had already reached the Highway. There, glass machines waited to roll. Beings who appeared to be duplicates of Celester led male Slakers to seats inside the glass tubes. The males were quickly whisked away.

Females had taken to flight, gliding in and out of the dimness at dometop. They dived around the transit tubes. Justice thought she recognized the Bambnua’s keening cry. It was the Dustwalker’s song of hope.

I hope there’s a good place for Slakers here, Justice thought.

Grims followed Celester beings who had taken charge of them at the Oneway. The smooth-keeps did not mind now that the grims were leaving. Then the packens, with Duster, Siv and Glass in the lead, fell in behind a group of Celester duplicates who smartly marched them away.

They’re taking everybody,
Thomas traced uneasily.

I don’t sense any danger in it,
Justice traced back. And then:
Thomas, what do you think of all this?

You’re asking me?
he traced.
I
’
ll tell you one thing. I think maybe the Dustland gang are being hypnotized, that’s what I think.

Well, it’s something like that,
she traced.
It’s in the damp. Feel how moist the air is.

Slippery, to keep the skin that covers the Celester beings smooth.
It was Levi divining this; he had been led into the discussion by Justice.

Celester, beside them, read their thoughts. Who cared? What was going to happen would.

Justice traced,
There’s something mixed in with the moisture that calms the Dustlanders.

You think it’s okay to drug people without them knowing it?
Thomas traced. He didn’t care if Celester read this.

It doesn’t affect us,
Justice traced.

That’s not the point! I can’t believe you’d go along with something like that,
Thomas traced.

If it’s not harmful for us, it can’t be harmful for Duster or any of them. Anyway, we can’t say that what’s done here is right or wrong. We don’t know enough about anything.

Well, I don’t like it,
Thomas traced.
Putting stuff in people’s air has to be wrong!

Don’t judge everything from our time,
she traced.
Here, it seems everyone is taken care of. Slakers get to go somewhere suitable, I guess. It looks like kinds are grouped.

Sounds like segregation,
Thomas traced.

Celester interjected, “There is equality in every domity. All serve their purpose.”

“Yeah,” Thomas muttered. “I’d like to be the guy that tells everyone else to serve!”

Just give it a chance,
Justice traced.

“What you say are packens,” said Celester, “go to their domusi—dwellings—where they live. There is a plan for them, but they are long separated from that plan of life. In Sona, where they belong, they must relearn.

“Now,” he said, “let us go awhile. The triway passes domusi and atmospas—resting places you call parks. Domus be a single dwelling for many like-kinds. Domusi is a grouping.” He stepped onto the moving Oneway and beckoned them to follow him.

On the Oneway they saw other people who were more like them than like Celester and who wore tunics or gowns that looked comfortable.

Telepathy raced among the four, for some of the people were telepathing to one another in unknown language rhythms. They greeted Celester in musical tones as well as sound segments like words.

Justice felt an intense mind-probe, scalpel sharp. She flicked her power, setting up barriers.
Off! Off!
she commanded and flung the thing away beyond her barrier.

She set up sense-posts at the perimeter of the four’s conscious thinking, in case other strangers attempted to mind-read them.

That was creepy,
Thomas traced. Warily they kept watch as people passed them.

How do you think they got here?
Dorian traced.

Who cares?
Thomas traced.
Maybe they were always here. I’m interested in getting out of here.
A moment ago he had remembered the Mal and the thought had put him on edge.

Justice didn’t take up his veiled suggestion to leave. She closed herself off from his worrying. She had no wish to go home just yet.

The Oneway passed near dwellings shaded in earth colors of yellow-brown, ocher, red-brown and the deep brown of bottomland. The domusi were curved geodesics, all the same size and made of unrecognizable material.

Celester explained that the domusi were constructed of blocks made of fibers that they grew themselves.

“Environment control is made a life system,” he said. “Small geodesics are maintained from saved energy supplied by the larger environment.”

More people passed them. Scanning them, Justice found her telepathy blocked. She watched them pass up a ramp to Midway.

“Who are they?” she asked. “They’re not duplicates, but they look alike somehow.”

“They are like you,” Celester said.

“Well, I can tell they’re human,” she said.

“Not only human, but time-travelers,” he said. “They come here as you came here, through the pause between times.”

She gazed up at him. “You mean they mind-jump?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “But how do they … how do we have our bodies?”

“No difficulty,” Celester said. “We detect your passage of mind into our evention—our phase. Our phase is the Origin of Reclaimen.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, “one thing at a time. Right now I can feel my skin, and my heart beats; I can touch my clothes and they protected me from the dust.”

“Just so,” Celester said. “I see!” he sang this time. “Yes to your next question. While you are with us, we build your body. We build your apparel from knowledge in your minds.”

“I didn’t feel a thing,” Dorian said.

“Me neither,” said Thomas.

“And on one of the earlier mind-jumps to Dustland,” Justice said, “Miacis attacked me. She went right through my clothes
and
my body, and right then I wasn’t real at all.”

“It is the conditioning of matter,” said Celester. “Integrate, disintegrate. We know how to encode matter, to integrate it or disintegrate it.”

The Watcher of Justice was there suddenly, rising in a glowing of her eyes. Celester’s enormous eyes concentrated on the aura, blue in hue and serene in nature, that was the gifted power of Justice’s mutation.

“I am the Watcher,” her voice vibrated. A deep tremor of light and dark was her thinking, hugely magnified. Observing.

Celester toned a five-note chord that expressed profound respect and awe. “Watcher, source, and true!” he exclaimed.

“You create life,” Justice said.

“We build life,” Celester toned this time. “The life cycle is the perpetuation of energy. Universal energy can not be decreased. Information constantly increases. We advance technology and increase productivity of community.”

“You manipulate matter, the instant teleportation of matter,” said Justice.

“There is no instant of time involved,” toned Celester. “It is like mind-reading. It takes no time at all. You are there.”

“You duplicate humans,” Justice said.

“Just so,” Celester spoke. He was quite calm, reassuring.

The Watcher faded. The aura of depth thinking disappeared.

“Why not just let humans develop on their own?” Justice said.

“We control for the efficiency of the result,” said Celester. “We do not have time for ordinary evolution.”

“But you separate one kind from another,” Levi said quietly. “Is that right?”

“Each has its plan and reason,” Celester told him. “As we reclaim Earth under our domes, we do not waste time in making mistakes.”

There was weariness in Celester’s voice. Something beneath the surface of it was full of sad regret. Justice came near and, before she knew it, had placed her hand on his. She found that his hand was warm. Feeling flowed from it to her. Celester tilted his head back, domeward. He began to sing:

“I be a Master-function. Through me, all occurs.” The song was sorrowful.

Justice was moved to ask, “Is it so awful, being part machine?” Scanning, she had discovered that his vital organs, his blood, were marvels of chemical synthesis.

“It is no worse than being part man.” Celester laughed. “I have man soul and man mind. The mind may be replaced and replaced as it dysfunctions. Yet each time it retains the soul; it keeps the prototype Celester’s memories and loves. I do love humankind. I work for humankind.”

The four of power stared at the human-thing Celester. Stunned, Thomas smacked the side of his head in astonishment. “To be like you and the other Celesters!” he burst out. “To have your parts replaced—debrained! I’d sure hate that! And rebrained—man, you must live forever. That’s why you have that … that skin. Your real skin must’ve been replaced!”