“I don’t recall that we ever put it to a vote and appointed you pastor of this here flock,” Constance was saying rather loudly as the two approached.
As Lamont watched the silver globe descend from its nest in the ceiling of the shuttle, he wondered how many times he would repeat the ritual. Over the course of months he had been aboard Westward, it had become a routine for him to stumble out of his quarters in the morning and take the lift down to the command deck, where technological marvel, architectural genius and cosmic splendor held common space. But that common space had become commonplace, he reflected; something he barely took a moment to acknowledge on his way to the coffee dispenser.
Now he was establishing a new routine. One in which he would climb into the underbelly of the asteroid pod, make the 37-minute journey across empty space to an alien structure of unknowable age and unbelievable size, and gain access to its interior through what Ed described as an “electromagnetic membrane.” One in which he would get into this lift and summon what looked like a magical interface, directing it to take him to a wonderland of unearthly fascinations. Yet somehow, by the mere fact that nothing unexpected was happening, the situation was beginning to feel almost normal. Was there nothing in this universe, he mused, that was immune to basic human adaptiveness?
The reverie was interrupted by the scene that greeted his eyes as the curved portal of the shuttle snapped open to reveal Rico Estevez. His muscular form was straining valiantly, but appeared to be buckling inevitably under the combined mass of multiple miniature creatures that were tenaciously clinging to him. Lamont’s cigarette hung loosely from his lips as he watched Rico stagger this way and that under the overwhelming assault, ultimately sinking to his knees before the lift.
“Señor Lamont!” The security specialist gasped. “Thank goodness. Send for help!”
The newspaperman shook his head regretfully. “It’s curtains for you, I’m afraid,” he said. “Good show, though.”
“We’ve got him, boys!” Jamie Downs crowed, his stick-like brown arms wrapped tightly around the thick cords of Rico’s neck. “Let’s tie him up!”
“With what?” Asked his twin brother Everett, whose entire body was wrapped around Rico’s left arm.
“I ain’t a boy!” Tessa Jackson objected from the opposite arm.
“You weigh as much as a full-grown man,” Rico grunted, trying to push himself up.
“Quiet, you!” Scolded Reese Howard. The toddler was clinging to Rico’s right leg, which she then proceeded to vigorously bite.
“You must have known something like this would happen,” Rosemary chided Rico as she daubed ointment on the neat crescent of pink indentations on his shin. “Riling the children up like that.”
Rico, sitting on a supply crate with his black pant leg rolled up, folded his thick arms gloomily. “I was only trying to keep them occupied while their parents were having their meeting. I did not know that one of them was feral!”
The medic chuckled. “I’ve never met a four year old that wasn’t.” She placed an adhesive bandage over the wound and stood to her feet, using Rico’s knees as leverage. “It’s painful because it’s against the bone, but she barely broke the skin.”
“Then why the bandage, señorita?” Rico asked.
“Moral support,” Rosemary shrugged, snapping up her medical bag.
“Where I come from, a kiss makes it better,” Rico grinned hopefully.
“Where I come from, it’s straight to amputation.” Rosemary offered a gap-toothed smile. “We’ll compromise.”
“Not that this isn’t charming,” Lamont said dryly from where he stood leaning against a crystalline outgrowth several paces away, “But what sort of meeting are they having? It seems awfully quiet around here, aside from the melee.”
“Not a meal,” Rico corrected him, sliding from the crate and testing his considerable weight on the injured limb. “A colony–er–what did they call it?”
“A colony conscience meeting,” Rosemary offered, shaking her head. “They’re trying to decide what to do about the shrine.”
“The what?” Lamont asked. He flicked the stump of his cigarette away and watched in his peripheral vision as it was quickly and silently absorbed into the purple, moss-like substance that covered much of the floor.
“That grove or hollow Connie showed us last time you were here,” the medic explained. She glanced in the direction of the children, who had initiated a game of tag to distract little Reese from her distress after Rico’s surprised yelp. “It’s become the object of some controversy in the meantime.”
“Oh, blimey,” Lamont groaned. “I’d better go have a look.”
Rosemary put a hand on Rico’s expansive bicep. “Not that I don’t trust you, but could you ask Ji-Ji to help you keep an eye on the sprogs? She’s making observations on the northside.”
“I did not join this crew to be a babysitter,” Rico grumbled.
“This may look like a fairyland,” Lamont reminded him, “But we still don’t know the first thing about it, or this tower. The colonists have entrusted what’s most precious to them to your care while they work things out. Have they made a mistake?”
“Of course not,” Rico assured him, straightening.
“Good man,” Lamont smiled.
“Thanks for that,” Rosemary sighed as she strolled beside Lamont in a winding path between exotic outcroppings that seemed neither entirely synthetic nor entirely organic. Many of the features looked familiar to Lamont, things that he recognized from his previous visits, but just as many he seemed to be noticing for the first time. Had they always been there, or was the garden in a subtle state of flux?
“He seemed to need a bit of encouragement after his defeat,” Lamont chuckled.
“It’s been a difficult transition for the members of the Westward crew here,” Rosemary explained. “They’re used to feeling as if they have a big, important purpose, and to thinking of the colonists as peripheral, when they think of ‘em at all. Now the situation has reversed. They—we—feel a little lost in this place.”
“What about the colonists?” Lamont asked.
“Mixed,” Rosemary admitted. “Some of them are treating this like an unwelcome detour. Others are acting as if it’s a vacation. Most seem to be undecided.”
“Not just the colonists,” Lamont chuckled. “Our friend Ed can’t make up his mind whether this is a honeypot or a candy store, if you get my meaning.”
Rosemary looked up at him thoughtfully. “When you put it that way—no. Do you mean that Ed thinks there’s a way to exploit the tower, not just escape from it?”
“As we speak, he’s down in the landing bay with Clifford seeing if they can’t hotwire one of the other vehicles.” Lamont sighed. “Worst part is, I think I gave him the idea.”
“Hold on—Clifford is back?” Rosemary asked, pressing a hand to Lamont’s chest to stop him in his tracks. The asymmetrical, semi-translucent flagstones on which they were walking had been subtly changing color as weight was placed upon them. The one on which they now stood glowed a soft, choral pink.
Lamont felt a little sheepish, as if his internal reasonings didn’t stand a chance against the fierce green eyes that were looking up at him. “He was daffy enough when we brought him home,” the newspaperman admitted. “But the effects seemed temporary. The consensus was that the value of his expertise outweighed the danger of some kind of…relapse.”
Rosemary frowned, gesturing her hand in the direction of the trail they were following. It meandered along the general curve of the star-speckled tower boundary, and Lamont could see the distinctive dome, something like a canopy of trees, that marked the grove up ahead. Around it, he noted a cluster of colonists in jumpsuits and dresses.
“We have no bleedin’ idea how that place is affecting people, but it obviously is,” the medic insisted. “If it were up to me, we’d quarantine it.”
“Can’t you?” Lamont asked.
“I strongly advised the folks who seem to be in charge to give that area a wide berth. You can see how much good it did. What am I supposed to do—wave a gun at them?” She locked eyes with Lamont, giving him an expression that clearly said, Don’t answer that.
By the time Lamont and Rosemary arrived within a stone’s throw of the grove, they could see that most, possibly all, of the adult colonists were gathered in a loose semi circle around it, and that they appeared to be divided into two groups. At the head of one group—that is, closest to the entrance of the grove—was Anna Lightfoot-Owens. At the head of the other group was Constance Beckett. They were engaged in an involved discussion of some kind. The animated gesticulations of the young Constance put her in distinct contrast to the matriarchal Anna, who stood as solidly as if she were planted to the ground, leaning as was her habit on a hand-carved walking stick.
“I don’t recall that we ever put it to a vote and appointed you pastor of this here flock,” Constance was saying rather loudly as the two approached.
“You did not, and I am not,” Agreed Anna. “But we’re a small group and we worship by collective consensus, in the appropriate ways and at the appropriate times. No good can come from…”
“Who’s worshiping?” Constance interrupted. “Y’all are acting as if I’m tryin’ to…” She stopped as she noticed the medic and the newspaperman hovering nearby.
“Afternoon, ladies,” Lamont greeted them, clearing his throat. “What’s happening?”
“Don’t see as that’s any of your business,” growled Jackson Clyde, his imposing form emerging from the loose cluster of people on Anna’s side. “This is a colonist affair.”
Anna touched a brown hand gently to his beefy arm. “There’s no need to be rude, Jack. We’re all pilgrims here.”
Clyde scowled between his large sideburns, but stepped deferentially back again.
“You’ve arrived at an inopportune moment,” Anna explained diplomatically. “Miss Beckett here can sometimes be high-spirited, as you know, and she’s just thrown us into a bit of a tizzy, is all.”
“I wasn’t doing anything,” Constance defended herself. “I was takin’ a little break over here, by myself,” these last two words were thrown at Anna like a cannon shot over her bow, “and then she decided to butt in and make it a shindig.”
Rosemary looked at Lamont uncomfortably. It was apparent that they had somehow changed roles from intruders in the dispute to arbiters of it.
Anna smiled thinly. “When I got here, you were certainly not by yourself.”
Constance gestured to the handful of colonists who stood roughly on her side. Their attention appeared to be divided between the spectacle of the womens’ dispute and the shadowy entrance of the organically molded canopy behind them. Closest to her was Abner Wade, who had an couldn’t seem to resolve itself between sheepishness and defiance. “I didn’t set out to attract attention,” Constance explained. “And it wouldn’t have been a big deal if y’all hadn’t made something of it.”
“How could we not, the way you were shoutin’ and carryin’ on?” Jackson chided her over Anna’s shoulder. “We thought you’d been hurt or something.”
Constance folded her arms over her chest, her freckled cheeks reddening with embarrassment. Abner appeared to be searching for words to defend her when there was a murmur among the others clustered around them.
“They’re coming out!” Someone exclaimed.
Lamont unconsciously lifted the recorder that was strapped over his neck, turning his attention with the others toward the vaulted entrance of the grove. It was something like a peaked threshold, a wider gap between the quasi-organic fluted columns of the tree-like structures that extended into something of a uniform canopy. Memories of Epiphany Rex flashed before his eyes, and he half expected to see the grotesque centipoid carapaces of that planet’s subterranean natives to incongruously present themselves from the dappled shadows of the grove’s interior. Instead, he was relieved to see that it was two ordinary humans. He quickly recognized them as Betty and Barney Downs, whose three children were among those he had found clinging to Rico when he had arrived.
The Downs couple contrasted in skin color, his being dark brown and hers being quite pale, but as they emerged from the grove, they both appeared to be somehow glowing. Not with a visible light, but with some kind of ineffable energy or presence that illuminated their wide eyes and appeared to make their awestruck features stand out more vividly in the hazy pastel light of the garden.
They were being peppered with questions from the group, who circled in around them. “What did you see?” “What was it like?” “Did you hear them?”
Barney lifted a thick hand to his mouth, as if he was at an utter loss for words, his round eyes flashing from face to face among his fellow colonists. Then, he suddenly gripped the closest one by the shoulders. Lamont recognized the wiry young man as Walter Ames, the veterinarian.
“I embarked upon a voyage that transcended the boundaries of mortal existence,” Barney explained earnestly. “A cosmic tapestry unfurled before me, woven with threads of divine radiance and enigmatic truths. The churning kaleidoscope of my mind became a sacred sanctuary, a temple where earthly confines yielded to the pulsating rhythm of celestial revelation.”
Walter’s long neck twitched with a gulp. “Hallelujah,” he whispered.
Releasing his shoulders, Barney swung around to address the rest of the group. He was making wild gestures with his beefy fists as the words poured out of him in an unbroken staccato. “As the ethereal kaleidoscope whirled and danced, I felt my consciousness merging with the very fabric of creation. My senses were alight with the hues of cosmic seraphim, their fiery wings unfurling like burning stars, singing hymns of creation that reverberated through the void. I beheld the—the Tree of Life! Its roots delving deep into the mysteries of existence, while its branches reached towards the infinite expanse of the heavens. Every leaf on its boughs bore the script of the cosmos, an eternal scripture written in the language of stars. The fruit of this tree was the sweet nectar of understanding, a sustenance that nourished the seeker's soul.”
Lamont glanced at Rosemary, who was holding a hand to her mouth. Then he noticed that Anna had stepped closer to the couple, placing a hand on the arm of the stunned-looking Betty Downs.
“Are you well, sister?” Anna asked quietly.
Betty’s blue eyes regarded Anna with an expression of blank incomprehension. Then, she broke into a smile, as if she had just received news that took a great weight off her shoulders. “As the astral winds whispered secrets of impending return, I felt the echoes of a psalm, older than time, deep in my soul,” she explained. “The words spoke of a celestial roundup where constellations would bow and comets would curtsy, paying homage to the imminent arrival of the Starlit Sages. Their arrival would be heralded by the flickering of the Pleiades, the galactic bonfires, ablaze with anticipation.”
Lamont edged over to Constance, who was watching the spectacle with an expression somewhere between fascination and horror. “Blimey, love,” Lamont whispered to her. “Is that what you sounded like?”
Constance grimaced. “Could be. I don’t rightly recall.”