0190: Absorbing Interest

Ziggurat #98

“I’ve tried to keep everyone occupied,” Constance was explaining as she led them along a meandering path through the artificial garden. “Betty, Barny and the boys went out to identify good campsites for the families. Roy, Joan and Reese were sent to see if they could find a solution for personal facilities. Miss Anna’s been gathering a sampling of everything that looks like it could be edible, and the crew members have been busy testing, measuring, mapping.”

“What’s the verdict so far?” Lamont asked. He was about to toss his cigarette aside, but realized that it would feel terribly profane to mar anything in his field of view with a discarded butt. 

“Go ahead,” Constance invited, glancing at him with a mischievous smirk. “I’m curious to see what’ll happen.”

Lamont glanced at Rosemary uncertainly, but the medic only offered a bemused shrug. Feeling their eyes on him, the newspaperman self-consciously flicked the remains of the cigarette onto a patch of something that looked like purple moss. The little Downs girl detached from Constance and made a bee-line for the spot where it had landed. “Look!” She exclaimed.

Circling around her, the trio crouched down and watched in fascination as tiny, pale tendrils of some kind emerged from the spongy floor and began to rapidly envelope the discarded object. Within moments, it had formed a sort of cocoon around the paper cylinder. Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the filaments returned back from where they had come. Lamont and Rosemary gasped. The cigarette was gone! Maggie giggled and crouched on her hands and knees, planting her tiny palms on the patch of purple and peering closely down into it. “Hello-o-o?” She sang.

“Don’t touch that!” Rosemary snapped, tugging the toddler’s shoulder back in alarm. Maggie staggered back onto the path and clung to Constance’s leg, her lip trembling.

“It’s all right!” Constance soothed the startled little girl, bending to pick her up before turning her eyes to Lamont and Rosemary with a mixed expression of amusement and apology. “It’s all right. I should’a explained. Watch.”

Balancing Maggie on her hip, Constance crouched down and placed her palm flat on the mossy patch just as the toddler had. She waited for a count of ten, looking up at her astonished companions. Nothing happened.

“The floor in most places has a way of absorbing organic matter,” the colonist explained. “But not living organic matter, I guess. Drop a bit of food or organic waste on the ground and it will disappear in a few minutes at the most. But you can sit here all day and nothing will happen to you.”

“It must be a kind of recycling system!” Rosemary guessed. “But how does it know the difference?”

“Beats me,” Constance admitted.

“That’s one less job for Abner,” Lamont quipped, scratching a stubbly chin.

The two women looked up at him with blank expressions.

He cleared his throat and checked his watch. “Blimey,” he muttered. “Sixteen minutes already.”

“Don’t go yet,” Constance urged him, setting Maggie on her feet as she stood. “There’s something else you should see.”