"What I'm trying to show you is that beneath the babbling brooks and singing trees and magic picture crystals of the garden is that. Some kind of chemical, maybe biological factory. It makes a kind of sense, don't it?"
Constance Beckett's eyes were hard as she answered Lamont's incredulous question in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. "It wasn't uncommon. I faked papers to get the job, but it's not like the managers didn't know, and it's not like I was the only one. You know how things are on Earth."
Lamont felt his still-stinging brow furrow in thought. He imagined the gleaming skyscrapers of London and Tomorrow. He imagined the expansive industrial farms in which grain was coaxed from protesting soil. He imagined the factories and mining outposts. He imagined the neat, uniform suburbs with white sidewalks arranged in perfect grids. Yes, he knew that many people worked—worked hard—in difficult conditions to continue the process of making the Epiphany-wrecked planet the haven it had once been for human flourishing. But the point of all of it—certainly in the Free West—was to reduce human suffering. To produce a life for everyone, regardless of status, that was better than what had existed before. To ensure that the conditions of desperation and depravity that had led to a past of warfare and struggle would no longer be among the factors that threatened the human species. "I thought I did," he finally whispered. In all his dozens of conversations with Constance, what had he never thought to ask her?
Beckett waved her hand dismissively before gesturing again toward the shuttle door. "What I'm trying to show you is that beneath the babbling brooks and singing trees and magic picture crystals of the garden is that. Some kind of chemical, maybe biological factory. It makes a kind of sense, don't it?"
Lamont tried to focus his thoughts. In his mind's eye, he rewatched visions of all the strange, semi-organic features he had encountered the garden. He remembered watching as his discarded cigarette was absorbed into the moss-like ground by tiny, silky tendrils. He thought of the purple, olive-sized fruit that Rosemary had popped into her mouth when they had first arrived, and then of the barely visible filaments, the only thing that remained of one of those fruits when she attempted to take it back to Westward. "Are you suggesting," he asked, "that everything that we see up there, might be made by this?" He nodded his head toward the doorway.
Constance answered cooly, pulling herself from the wall with a small visible effort to take a step toward him. "I'm supposing, Monty, that maybe everything we see up there is all the same thing. The same stuff. That maybe the only real difference between this—" she gestured toward the doorway. "—and this—" Now she lifted her hand to gesture toward the ceiling. "—is whatever's in the floor to separate 'em."
"An illusion," Lamont whispered.
"Not exactly. But a—a—" Constance snapped her fingers, searching for the word. "A construct," she concluded. "Something designed specifically for us, or people like us."
"Something that could be anything it needed to be," Lamont suggested.
The young woman nodded. "You're catching on, newspaperman."
Lamont put a hand to his head. "Of course!" He scolded himself. "What else could it be? 'The purpose of the place is to foster receptivity.'"