“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.”
“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.